The kitchen, other than the garden and her room within the Inn was one of Ran's utmost favorite spots in the entire realm. It sounded utterly childish, naive and perhaps a bit ridiculous even to the flower woman when spoken aloud or occasionally written down on parchment paper. But there is was. And it was true. There was always work to be done in the kitchen.
The stew in it's horrifically evil stew state was always glooping and gloobing all over the floor as it rattled its chain-wrapped cover. No one appeared willing or wanting to go near it or the sometimes glowing goop to clean it, so Ran, ever studious and well versed at avoiding contact with things, bent down every morning or night and scrubbed where the stew had left its gifts. She was unafraid of the living Grail's concoction and often spoke to it in that odd, calm alto of hers. It rattled back occasionally and some times let her clean under and even its surface. It never stayed clean long.
There were always dishes. Dishes, dishes, and more dishes. Piled high in the sink forever and ever and piled even higher to be taken through the odd gnomish invention that took large loads of dishes and washed, then sanitized them faster than Ran could keep up with. When it worked. When it didn't, she didn't load them into the dish washer but peeled off her gloves and delved her hands for hours on end into dish-soapy water.
It was not a beautiful thing, neither for her hands or the act of it. Anyone who has washed a dish understands how the water gets. How many times it must be changed. Anyone who lived in Rhy'din also understood the oddities one found on plates and yet, Ran stomached it all. The dirty water being sucked away, drained cleaned of food bits and clean hot water replaced. The scrubbing over immense sink, hot water on her face. The prune-wrinkling of her bare hands and eventually the roughness of them--forever dried out from soap and hard work. These were not ladies hands, but workers hands.
But Ran delighted in every minute of it.
Dishes did not fill her head with voices not of her own when she touched them. Dishes did not confuse her. Dishes did not flood her mind with memories, of paths in the future not her own. She could touch them without fear and know touch without worry.
So many people forgot how precious something they had, was, until it was taken from them.
So tonight was no different than any other night. After watching the Inn become riddled to near splinters and dust from bullets, after the screaming, the singing, the blood, tears and anger. After an odd first meeting with Traith, Artsblood and an old man who apparently didn't understand how Rhy'din time worked...Ran had delved into washing the unholy pile of dishes left in the kitchen.
As she leaned over the sink to watch the last of the water drain away, that small voice in her head piped up: but is it the real reason why?
"No," Ran said aloud. The stew rattled its cover in sleepy-surprise. It was so early in the morning and Ran had been quiet so long, it had not expected the sound of her voice.
The flower prophet wiped her hands dry, then clean, walked past the empty skins of her leather gloves on the cabinet and went for the icebox. Within it, she removed one of the many secret stashes of home made vanilla bean ice cream she had left. They weren't being eaten by anyone. She might as well. A spoon was grabbed on her way back and Ran set the ice cream atop the counter and stared at it.
For long moments, she simply looked at it and through it. She pictured a man with gray-green eyes curling hand around it, smoking. He smoked too much, always. He wore a suit dangerously well.
"No," she said to the man in her imagination. "What is bothering me is that I see the stars falling now, every night. The cold, lonesome stars who shiver together in the sky are being plucked out and eaten by something. Something larger than anything I have ever felt. Something so black that it dots out the sky while it is eating and leaves nothing left.
"And I do not know what it is. All I know is that every night I wake up screaming, in sweat, with my stomach heaving. I wake up between dreams of the thousands already dead because I did warn them and caught between the thousands that may die, because I fear to warn them now.
"I have no face. No name and no words for this terror. All I know is that they are coming. They are hungry. And these words beat a rhythm in my head like a sledgehammer over and over and over and over again.
"They are coming. They are hungry.
"For what? What do they seek? Who are they? How can I tell them to make ready for a foe that exists only in my nightmares? And do I dare speak the words? Will I set fire to them all again?"
Ran took the spoon in bare freckle touched fist and in a rare act of emotion, plunged it like knife point into the top of ice cream container. The force of it was so harsh, so truth, the spoon in all actuality pierced the top and buried deep in the frozen treat. A heart speared on the end of a sword.
"I do not know what to do," she whispered to a ghost of a man she sometimes wondered if she dreamed. "I am Cassandra, all over again."
Ran lowered her brow to the cool of the counter top and closed her eyes.
In silence, two drops of water shivered across knife-scarred top, stayed for seconds shivering liquid light, then disappeared. Swallowed by hungry dead wood.
Sinister Plot
The stew in it's horrifically evil stew state was always glooping and gloobing all over the floor as it rattled its chain-wrapped cover. No one appeared willing or wanting to go near it or the sometimes glowing goop to clean it, so Ran, ever studious and well versed at avoiding contact with things, bent down every morning or night and scrubbed where the stew had left its gifts. She was unafraid of the living Grail's concoction and often spoke to it in that odd, calm alto of hers. It rattled back occasionally and some times let her clean under and even its surface. It never stayed clean long.
There were always dishes. Dishes, dishes, and more dishes. Piled high in the sink forever and ever and piled even higher to be taken through the odd gnomish invention that took large loads of dishes and washed, then sanitized them faster than Ran could keep up with. When it worked. When it didn't, she didn't load them into the dish washer but peeled off her gloves and delved her hands for hours on end into dish-soapy water.
It was not a beautiful thing, neither for her hands or the act of it. Anyone who has washed a dish understands how the water gets. How many times it must be changed. Anyone who lived in Rhy'din also understood the oddities one found on plates and yet, Ran stomached it all. The dirty water being sucked away, drained cleaned of food bits and clean hot water replaced. The scrubbing over immense sink, hot water on her face. The prune-wrinkling of her bare hands and eventually the roughness of them--forever dried out from soap and hard work. These were not ladies hands, but workers hands.
But Ran delighted in every minute of it.
Dishes did not fill her head with voices not of her own when she touched them. Dishes did not confuse her. Dishes did not flood her mind with memories, of paths in the future not her own. She could touch them without fear and know touch without worry.
So many people forgot how precious something they had, was, until it was taken from them.
So tonight was no different than any other night. After watching the Inn become riddled to near splinters and dust from bullets, after the screaming, the singing, the blood, tears and anger. After an odd first meeting with Traith, Artsblood and an old man who apparently didn't understand how Rhy'din time worked...Ran had delved into washing the unholy pile of dishes left in the kitchen.
As she leaned over the sink to watch the last of the water drain away, that small voice in her head piped up: but is it the real reason why?
"No," Ran said aloud. The stew rattled its cover in sleepy-surprise. It was so early in the morning and Ran had been quiet so long, it had not expected the sound of her voice.
The flower prophet wiped her hands dry, then clean, walked past the empty skins of her leather gloves on the cabinet and went for the icebox. Within it, she removed one of the many secret stashes of home made vanilla bean ice cream she had left. They weren't being eaten by anyone. She might as well. A spoon was grabbed on her way back and Ran set the ice cream atop the counter and stared at it.
For long moments, she simply looked at it and through it. She pictured a man with gray-green eyes curling hand around it, smoking. He smoked too much, always. He wore a suit dangerously well.
"No," she said to the man in her imagination. "What is bothering me is that I see the stars falling now, every night. The cold, lonesome stars who shiver together in the sky are being plucked out and eaten by something. Something larger than anything I have ever felt. Something so black that it dots out the sky while it is eating and leaves nothing left.
"And I do not know what it is. All I know is that every night I wake up screaming, in sweat, with my stomach heaving. I wake up between dreams of the thousands already dead because I did warn them and caught between the thousands that may die, because I fear to warn them now.
"I have no face. No name and no words for this terror. All I know is that they are coming. They are hungry. And these words beat a rhythm in my head like a sledgehammer over and over and over and over again.
"They are coming. They are hungry.
"For what? What do they seek? Who are they? How can I tell them to make ready for a foe that exists only in my nightmares? And do I dare speak the words? Will I set fire to them all again?"
Ran took the spoon in bare freckle touched fist and in a rare act of emotion, plunged it like knife point into the top of ice cream container. The force of it was so harsh, so truth, the spoon in all actuality pierced the top and buried deep in the frozen treat. A heart speared on the end of a sword.
"I do not know what to do," she whispered to a ghost of a man she sometimes wondered if she dreamed. "I am Cassandra, all over again."
Ran lowered her brow to the cool of the counter top and closed her eyes.
In silence, two drops of water shivered across knife-scarred top, stayed for seconds shivering liquid light, then disappeared. Swallowed by hungry dead wood.
Sinister Plot