Topic: Aftermath

Hudson Fraiser

Date: 2008-12-08 11:26 EST
Joaqim scuffed his bare feet through the damp sand near the water?s edge. His brown eyes scoured the beach, looking for the tell-tale depressions in the sand that hid clams beneath. His woven basket was already almost full ? nobody else ventured this far from the village, not anymore, and so he was the only one to reap the bounty. But if he got just a few more, Iona would be able to sell some. And besides, there was a dark shape just a little way further up the beach. If the storm two days before had washed up anything interesting or valuable, he had an obligation to investigate.

He was already rehearsing the excuses he would use when he noticed the strange behavior of the birds. Normally they would be hopping over the storm-wrack, picking through it for food. Instead they kept bouncing forward cautiously and then fluttering back with a rush of wings. Joaqim?s eyes widened and he ran forward with the basket swinging wildly over his arm. When he got close enough to see the cause of the bird?s strange behavior, he almost mimicked them, dancing backwards. There was a man caught in a tangle of rope and wood, his clothing and appearance strange and foreign.

After a moment, however, Joaqim set down the basket and eased cautiously closer. The man wasn?t moving despite the uncomfortable-appearing drape of his body across the wood. His right arm was twisted almost entirely underneath his body and trapped in the tangle, and there was pallor underneath the tan and weathering of his skin. Maybe the man was dead. If he was dead, the clothing would be worth something at market. And there was a glint of metal on his left shoulder ? metal could always be sold, no matter what kind.

It wasn?t too hard for Joaqim to work his way into the middle of the tangle where the man was trapped. Clever brown fingers began picking at the ropes, trying to free the knots, while Joaqim shot short glances at the man out of the corner of his eyes. He still wasn?t moving, didn?t look to be breathing ? was that a breath or just the rising tide stirring the wood? Surely it was just the tide. Nobody who was alive would lie so still for so long. And as Joaqim grew more frustrated with the water-swollen knots of hemp, he stopped looking at the man so carefully.

So when he freed the last knot and turned back to start stripping the corpse, Joaqim was entirely unprepared to meet a fever-bright gaze from black eyes. The boy froze, his own brown eyes going wider and wider when a string of incomprehensible syllables whispered from the man, his voice cracked and dried by salt water and fever. ?D? tha thu ag iarraidh? Tha gaol agam ort, Moira mo croidhe, ach chan eil fhios agam tha thu ag iarraidh.?*

Joaqim lurched backwards, shifting the mass of wood, and the man cried out when it twisted his right arm further. Those strange black too-bright eyes closed when the man passed out. The boy scrambled back off of the wreckage and ran, sand flying from beneath his bare feet. The basket of clams was forgotten next to the wood, and his voice was high and piercing as he called out, still running. <Iona! Iona!!>



*?What do you want? I love you, Moira my heart, but I don?t know what you want.?

Hudson Fraiser

Date: 2008-12-21 12:49 EST
First there was blackness, and a dizzying spinning whirl that gradually eased. Hudson could feel himself rising slowly to consciousness as if layers of wool were being slowly stripped away. There was a scent in the air, sharp, astringent, nothing he recognized ? thick enough to leave a bitter taste at the back of his mouth and throat. He could feel the rasp of air over abused vocal cords, and the bumps in whatever surface he was resting on seemed to jab directly into bruised muscles. He started to shift experimentally, and the generalized pain suddenly became very specific ? lancing through his right arm from wrist to shoulder and then knotting across his back.

Hudson flinched, and then forced himself to relax back into his former position. Listening, eyes still closed, he could pick out the sound of a fire burning and a pot bubbling softly on it. Quiet motion from that direction, a soft clunk of something set on wood. Closer, light and careful footfalls, just barely audible. His lips turned up a bit at one corner ? Cian trying to sneak up on him, perhaps? And that would mean it was Sylvia by the fire. The slight smile grew a fraction, quirked as he tried to hide it. But what was that scent?

Black eyes opened slowly, a word of praise for Cian already caught on the tip of Hudson?s tongue, and met the wide-eyed gaze of a boy he had no memory of seeing before. The words he had ready changed to a single one released on an explosive breath of surprise. ?Chriosd!? Memories of the storm surged back and with it a stab of disappointment just as painful as his arm had been. Sharp on the heels of that came a rise of confusion ? his last real memory was of struggling on top of the spar in the waves.

The boy seemed just as startled to see Hudson awake, and lunged backward with a scramble and flailing of unruly limbs. <Aya! He?s awake, the stranger?s awake!> Nut-brown of skin and hair, wearing tattered pants inches too short and a leather vest embroidered with bright geometric designs, the boy didn?t seem more than ten or so. The language was nothing Hudson recognized, a liquid gabble without the sibilance of the South Islands or the choppy rhythm of Common.

The woman by the fire turned to regard Hudson, her skin just as nut-brown as the boy?s though far more wrinkled. Her hair was a cloud of silver and her hands were twisted with age. For all of that, the smile she gave Hudson was a brilliant thing. <Good! The sea has given him back after all. Now make yourself useful, Joaqim, and bring him some water from the brown pitcher ? or get yourself back to Iona.>

Hudson listened to the woman speak with his brows pulling down into furrowed concentration. None of it was familiar at all, but two words ? Joaqim and Iona ? sounded like names. Apparently the woman had been giving the boy some directions though. The boy hurried over to the table near the woman and carefully poured water from a clay pitcher into a sturdy wooden cup. He filled it almost to overflowing and then walked slowly back over to Hudson with the cup held in both hands with an earnest frown turning down his mouth as he tried not to spill the liquid.

The quirk of a smile touched the corner of Hudson?s mouth again, and then promptly vanished in a gasp of pain when he tried to move to take the offered cup. He had received his share of injuries in the past, and the spasm of his back muscles was unmistakable, as was the pain of a broken arm and wrenched shoulder. After a moment to catch his breath, he opened his eyes again and met the dismayed look of the boy. ?Would ye be a grand lad and help me tae sitting, then??

The blank look on the boy?s face was a clear indication that Common was as unknown to the boy as the boy?s language was to Hudson. Hudson sighed quietly. After a moment the boy held the cup to Hudson?s mouth and tilted it so that Hudson could drink ? which he did, grateful for the liquid despite the amount of it that escaped to trickle down the side of his neck to soak into the pillow beneath his head. Still parched by the salt water and long fever, it took several swallows before he caught that astringent, bitter flavor in the water as well as in the air.

As soon as he tasted that unfamiliar sharpness, Hudson closed his lips and turned his face away from the cup, black eyes fastening on the old woman by the fire. Her smile was just as brilliant as before, her dark brown eyes peaceful when she spoke in that liquid gabble. <You can run and get Dimas now, Joaqim. I?ll need his help to set the stranger?s arm. It needs to be rebroken to heal straight.> The boy put the cup back on the table and ran out the door, and then the woman spoke directly to Hudson, though the words were no more understandable. <Sleep now, Fortunato, lucky one.>

The room blurred and darkened around the edges, and Hudson felt his eyes sliding shut without his will. The layers of wool wrapped him gently back into sleep.

Hudson Fraiser

Date: 2009-02-11 15:13 EST
<Joaqim! You're making a pest of yourself! Give that poor man at least one day without your incessant chatter.> Iona was laughing as she spoke though, and so Joaqim just grinned at her while he dumped the the last load of wood on the stack. Once that chore was done he turned and darted out of the hut on silent bare feet with a wave over his shoulder to his sister.

The stranger - Hudson, which Joaqim thought was a very silly name - had promised Joaqim a special treat today. They were going to go fishing with the net that Joaqim had made himself, with only a little bit of help from Hudson. Dodging down overgrown paths, avoiding the reach of a climber vine without thinking about it, Joaqim wasn't even breathing hard by the time he skidded to a stop in front of Aya's hut. After all, he had run that path every day since he had found Hudson washed up on the beach.

This time Hudson was waiting for him in front of Aya's hut, and Joaqim's eyes immediately went wide. The cast was off his arm! <Hudson! Your arm, the cast is off! Does it still hurt? Look at how thin your arm is! And all white! Are you that pale everywhere under your clothes?>

Hudson smiled briefly at Joaqim's rapid flow of words, an expression which only lightly touched his black eyes. He still couldn't understand more than one word in three of the musical language, and the boy's excited speed didn't help. But some of the sense of his meaning came through in the wide-eyed stare at his arm. Hudson flexed his forearm, worked his wrist and curled his hand into a fist while Joaqim watched. "Aye, lad, th' cast be off and a wee be sore my arm be still, but th' strength will come back tae it. And th' best way tae gain that strength back be with th' work I dae. Sae be ye ready tae gae fishing, lad?"

The boy's black hair swung over his shoulders at the excited nod, and then he ran into Aya's hut, coming out a moment later with the child-sized net slung over his shoulder. Too excited to wait, he pelted off down the path to the beach, and Hudson followed a moment later.