Post by satis on Sept 6, 2022 17:18:51 GMT -5
On August 20, I had a very vivid dream, and between sleeping and waking, I took some notes. As soon as I was fully awake, I sat down and wrote ... this. Please be gentle, it's the first creative thing I've written since 2016 or so, when the whole world went to hell or so it seemed, anyway...
I'm super intrigued by this beginning, but I have absolutely no clue where to go from here or how. So if you guys can somehow talk to my Muses, I'd totally appreciate it!
Trigger warnings: Deaths mentioned, ceremonial self-harm mentioned, not graphic.
Homecoming
A hard homecoming he has of it this time, and it isn’t even winter yet; but the autumn weather has already turned cold and wet, the golden days of September, the soft rustling of October leaves carried away by harsh November winds. The damp and dank leather of boots, bags, saddle, and armour creates a perfume of bad dye and acrid smoke. Combined with the fetid odor of mold, old blood, sweaty horse and unwashed male body it clings to his every stiff move, as he leads his exhausted horse the path up the mountain and toward the keep of the Guard.
He hails the Guards on duty with a hoarse voice, provides his personal password and a drop of blood for the scryer’s blade to prove he hasn’t turned traitor to the guild, and hands off his horse to a groom.
Then he hurries across the drawbridge and through the main gate. He flinches when the griffon on the wall above growls and screeches and paces, claws scraping on the flagstones of the battlements. Then the scent of horse – dung and hay and dusty fur, soft nickers in the darkness – wraps him in a thick and warm embrace as he passes the stables near the outer gate, finally sheltered from the bitter winds sweeping across the mountainside. He crosses the courtyard without looking left or right, making straight for the main building, nestled safe and snug against the crags at the back of the keep. The inner gate, made of steel but strangely easy to move, allows him to enter a tunnel with a barrel vault ceiling and several hidden traps in the floor and the walls, should attackers ever advance to this point. The large door on his right, massive enough that he needs to push against it with his body weight to gain a groaning, creaking entrance, leads to the common room, where most of his sisters and brothers in arms gather on a night like this.
Inside, dancing flames of torches illuminate cuffed and cracked wood paneling along the walls, the stonework above it gray with white mortar, smeared with soot. Weapons and shields and armour glint and gleam on hooks and shelves, displayed as decoration and conveniently stored away within easy reach. As his eyes get used to the flickering twilight, he takes in the familiar scene.
A tiger tabby in a corner darts after a mouse or morsel thrown her way. Under the first long table, two shaggy black dogs lie yawning, pawing for scraps and whining for scratches. Ahead of him at the bar, Orvid bangs a mug on the counter to be filled with beer from the enormous barrel. The air is thick and heavy with fumes from the fire place, assorted pipes and smoke stuffs, ripe with the odors of warm bodies, the smell of beer, fresh and stale, the sharp tang of spirits, and redolent with the aroma of tonight’s stew and the nutty fragrance of freshly baked rye bread, even served with a dollop of butter perhaps.
Others must have completed their errands more successfully than he did.
The noise of the crowd feels physical, like the roar of the surf outside at the base of the cliff, and it draws him under like a riptide. Voices, familiar and foreign, talking, shouting, laughing, coughing, singing. Sounds of drinking and eating, the irregular pounding of mugs on the tabletops, of clanking tankards in celebration, the content scraping of knives across plates. The grind and hiss of someone sharpening a dagger somewhere. At the back, the twang of a guitar or maybe a harp being tuned rings out.
Rowl is the first to notice Ale, and a moment of cheerfulness brightens the red face of the burly fellow with both arms full of mugs and tankards.
But the welcome dies on Rowl’s lips when he sees that Ale is alone, and that he is bearing a heavy burden, a pack with weapons that are not his.
They set out a group of four. Mather, the white maiden, second-in-command of their guild. Squirrel – once upon a time “Squire Rogan of Thelmy” – now a Guard and an outlaw. Karak, the sage. And Ale. (Alas. Atlas, Alant. Alewise.) Not a drunkard, in spite of the nickname, although sometimes that would make things easier to bear.
Only Ale returns tonight.
Grief almost strangles him, makes it hard to breathe. The room, warm and rowdy around him, seems to fade away, growing cold and distant and surreal.
He slides the pack off his back and wraps both arms around it to press it against his chest, a tremor tearing at his muscles, turning his grip unsteady.
He has brought back the weapons of his comrades for the funeral ceremonies.
Bodies get buried or burned, sometimes lost, sometimes left behind in ditches if times are hard. But weapons become markers in scared ground. Memorials that celebrate their owners, the warriors who wielded them, for centuries. Thus the dead of the Guard are honoured, and remembered.
A dozen guards have risen now, and Ale hears Rainn’s voice, keening, breaking with grief, somewhere out of sight. Vorn, the Bear, shoves his way through the crowd, heavy steps, harsh movements.
The guild leader stops in front of Ale. When Bear accepts the leather-wrapped bundle from Ale, his muscles strain with burden heavier than the weight of the weapons inside. He stares at Ale with a bleak expression for a long moment.
Then he raises his bushy brows in a frown, wordlessly commanding Ale to report.
The crowd around them has fallen silent, but even without voices there’s still noise whispering around them. Heavy breathing, restless movements, the muffled sounds of weeping. Oh, Rainn. Slender and sweet and deadly, first and last lover of Mather the White, swordmaiden and swan maiden of the guild.
“The Scriptor of Erbul has been murdered,” Ale says. “But not before appointing our Guard as the official Guard of the Lost Scribes.”
An edict that means their guild is now in charge of protecting the lives and possessions of said Scribes, and that they also have the right to declare guild wars in order to recover the Scribes’ possessions or any secret stolen from them.
But only of the Lost, which makes the undertaking somewhat tricky. Their whereabouts are unknown – hence the title. The Lost may be Scribes who were banned, actually got lost in the mundane meaning and disappeared in the wilderness, or Scribes fled and hidden away. But Mather said what is hidden, may be found, and what is lost, may be recovered. And Squirrel was sure that bans could be lifted.
“Was it worth it? Their lives?”
Ale returns the guild leader’s stare. “Mather thought so.”
He had no idea just how dangerous their mission was, and he’s not sure if that isn’t the reason Mather picked him to come along in the first place. His obliviousness may have kept him alive, while Karak hesitated at just the wrong moment. Thus, his staff was broken along with his spine.
And of course Ale had connections in Erbul, which they had needed. Lin, though she’d been conspicuously absent. Her cousin Temis, who’d helped them. And of course the city cats. Erbul, hot, humid, powerful, pernicious; a coastal city grown of three towns, spanning across three countries where their spheres of power meet – collide – condense – at the mouth of the mighty river Erbach. The City of Cats, of crooks and scoundrels, of turrets and tunnels, of libraries and scriptoriums. A city of secrets.
“How did you live?”
Ale winces, but he expected that question and so he lifts the ragged fringe of his shaggy brown hair that obscured his high forehead so far. The blue mark of an Untouchable means little here among the guild, but still some of them recoil, a few even taking a step backward, away from him. “An Unperson touched me.”
Genug didn’t just touch him. They sheltered his body with theirs, protected him, even as they unmade him, made him Untouchable – unkillable even for Assassins, even for Royal Guards, even for Death Herself, or so some stories claim.
He still remembers the weight and warmth of their body stretched out on top of him, their gown spilling over them both in waves of blue fabric, their perfume of cool smoke and crisp spice, their voice, low, urgent, full of regret.
Ale shakes himself, and faces Vorn-the-Bear; and Rowl, and Rainn, and the others. The Bear nods, and moves past him, carrying the weapons away for now. When the guild leader is gone, the others slowly turn away from Ale, sitting back down, reaching for mugs and cutlery again, picking up interrupted conversations. But the mood is subdued and the noise of the crowd remains muted.
Rowl allows Ale to sit against the wall, at the far end of the long table at the front of the room. A place that will permit him to escape, should Rainn decide to kill him on the spot, instead of waiting for explanations to come, and the first, cruel wave of grief to subside. A mug of beer, a bowl of stew with a slab of bread probably mean that Rowl himself reserves judgement, at least for the time being, for tonight. And he’s not the type to use poison.
The others at the long table settle down as well, but at a distance, or as much of a distance as is possible in the crowded common room of the Guard.
The Guard. Just “The Guard”, or sometimes, with a sneer, called the Common Guard. Not the Royal Guard or a Noble Guard. Not Bodyguards to be hired by politicians or celebrities, though they may accept such jobs individually. Not part of the troops, neither serving as Rearguard or Advance, certainly not Protectors of the Realm or Watchmen. But also not mere hired muscle, rabble rousers and robbers, highwaymen by another name.
Ale eats mechanically, because he’s hungry, but without an appetite. Tonight’s food is wasted on him. He looks around, but although he recognises most faces, he feels as if he doesn’t really see his comrades. He’s there, yet at the same time far away. Eventually he gets up and finds the way to his room.
He leaves the door unlocked. Perhaps he wants Rainn to come and find him.
But his sleep remains undisturbed, and then it is morning, and the guild gathers in the Great Hall before Bear leads the procession to the cemetery.
It is Ale’s duty to erect the memorials.
He stabs Squirrel’s dagger into a white boulder, softened for a moment by Ciel’s Black power.
He sticks the two halves of Karak’s staff into the ground, leaning against each other, a gleaming mahogany triangle over a patch of tiny, white, star-like flowers.
Finally, near the cliff, he plunges Mather’s long sword into the ground. A harsh, shrill noise rings out as metal crashes into rock and reverberates through the stones under their feet.
This is sacred ground, from the cliff to the crags behind the keep. No weapon will rust here, no wood, not even paper decays, as a book left open under an ancient pine tree proves. Sometimes words are the mightiest weapons, Karak used to say. But the book’s pages are empty and heavier than stone. Only a true heir of the guard remembered with that tome could read it and pick it up. This, however, happens rarely, in legends and fairy tales for the most part.
Ale, having fulfilled his duty, falls back and remains behind when the others return to the keep, to the banquet in the Great Hall, where there will be speeches and songs to honour the dead before tomorrow the Council convenes. The leaders of the Guard will have to decide on the next step of whatever Mather set into motion with their trip to Erbul. How to find and protect the Lost Scribes, or how to revenge them, and most of all: How to gain access to their secrets, the secrets that Mather thought important enough to die for.
He sits down next to Mather’s sword as if he wants to invite Rainn yet again to take revenge and free him from guilt and grief. He stares at the sky and the sea. Everything is gray today. He can barely make out the horizon, where clouds and waves mingle, gray touching gray. The air feels warm and moist, the day strangely temperate for this time of the year.
Ale thinks of Erbul, a home he loved and lost, of Squirrel and Karak and Mather, his family of the heart. And of strange Genug, their gray eyes, gray within gray within gray, silver almost white, stormy as the sea and the sky, slate so dark it’s almost black, and gray hair, too, although they didn’t look much older than forty, if that. A beautiful mouth.
“Alant,” they whispered. A smoky voice, low and soothing.
He wonders where they are. If he’ll ever see them again. What will happen now, to him, to the guild.
He knows that he’ll have to don the blue, ethereal robes of the Unpersons and Untouchables, fleeting as the wind, fluid like water. But he has no clue what happens then. If he will lose himself as he is now, if he will become they, and a part of them. He can’t remember if an Untouchable was a member of the guild before. He thinks, yes, but he isn’t sure. Or what the difference between Untouchable and Unperson is. If there is one; colloquially, most people use the terms as if they have the same meaning. Not He, not She. Them. Other.
But today he’s still allowed to rest, to grieve. To sit here and stare at the sea until it is time to make his own, personal markers, straight cuts in the flesh of his arm. Not deep enough to be dangerous. Just deep enough to scar, extending the pattern of straight, white stripes meandering up his left arm. He’s still young, there’s more than enough space on his left arm, and his right is still untouched. This is an old tradition, shared by many guilds across the kingdoms. Once he saw an ancient Watchman with both arms and legs ringed completely in white ridges, his eyes empty, as he stared into the distance in the middle of a crowd. But Ale still prefers the scars to the smooth skin of an Assassin or worse. Each scar proves that he cared, that he loved, that he lost.
He reaches for his dagger and honours Squirrel and Karak and Mather with his blood and with his pain. When the blood has dried on his arm, he knows he should return to the keep, to the Great Hall, to add his voice to those who celebrate there and reminisce.
But he stays where he is, sitting on the cliff, next to Mather’s sword. He stares at the sky and at the sea and waits for the stranglehold of grief to release him.
I'm super intrigued by this beginning, but I have absolutely no clue where to go from here or how. So if you guys can somehow talk to my Muses, I'd totally appreciate it!
Trigger warnings: Deaths mentioned, ceremonial self-harm mentioned, not graphic.
Homecoming
A hard homecoming he has of it this time, and it isn’t even winter yet; but the autumn weather has already turned cold and wet, the golden days of September, the soft rustling of October leaves carried away by harsh November winds. The damp and dank leather of boots, bags, saddle, and armour creates a perfume of bad dye and acrid smoke. Combined with the fetid odor of mold, old blood, sweaty horse and unwashed male body it clings to his every stiff move, as he leads his exhausted horse the path up the mountain and toward the keep of the Guard.
He hails the Guards on duty with a hoarse voice, provides his personal password and a drop of blood for the scryer’s blade to prove he hasn’t turned traitor to the guild, and hands off his horse to a groom.
Then he hurries across the drawbridge and through the main gate. He flinches when the griffon on the wall above growls and screeches and paces, claws scraping on the flagstones of the battlements. Then the scent of horse – dung and hay and dusty fur, soft nickers in the darkness – wraps him in a thick and warm embrace as he passes the stables near the outer gate, finally sheltered from the bitter winds sweeping across the mountainside. He crosses the courtyard without looking left or right, making straight for the main building, nestled safe and snug against the crags at the back of the keep. The inner gate, made of steel but strangely easy to move, allows him to enter a tunnel with a barrel vault ceiling and several hidden traps in the floor and the walls, should attackers ever advance to this point. The large door on his right, massive enough that he needs to push against it with his body weight to gain a groaning, creaking entrance, leads to the common room, where most of his sisters and brothers in arms gather on a night like this.
Inside, dancing flames of torches illuminate cuffed and cracked wood paneling along the walls, the stonework above it gray with white mortar, smeared with soot. Weapons and shields and armour glint and gleam on hooks and shelves, displayed as decoration and conveniently stored away within easy reach. As his eyes get used to the flickering twilight, he takes in the familiar scene.
A tiger tabby in a corner darts after a mouse or morsel thrown her way. Under the first long table, two shaggy black dogs lie yawning, pawing for scraps and whining for scratches. Ahead of him at the bar, Orvid bangs a mug on the counter to be filled with beer from the enormous barrel. The air is thick and heavy with fumes from the fire place, assorted pipes and smoke stuffs, ripe with the odors of warm bodies, the smell of beer, fresh and stale, the sharp tang of spirits, and redolent with the aroma of tonight’s stew and the nutty fragrance of freshly baked rye bread, even served with a dollop of butter perhaps.
Others must have completed their errands more successfully than he did.
The noise of the crowd feels physical, like the roar of the surf outside at the base of the cliff, and it draws him under like a riptide. Voices, familiar and foreign, talking, shouting, laughing, coughing, singing. Sounds of drinking and eating, the irregular pounding of mugs on the tabletops, of clanking tankards in celebration, the content scraping of knives across plates. The grind and hiss of someone sharpening a dagger somewhere. At the back, the twang of a guitar or maybe a harp being tuned rings out.
Rowl is the first to notice Ale, and a moment of cheerfulness brightens the red face of the burly fellow with both arms full of mugs and tankards.
But the welcome dies on Rowl’s lips when he sees that Ale is alone, and that he is bearing a heavy burden, a pack with weapons that are not his.
They set out a group of four. Mather, the white maiden, second-in-command of their guild. Squirrel – once upon a time “Squire Rogan of Thelmy” – now a Guard and an outlaw. Karak, the sage. And Ale. (Alas. Atlas, Alant. Alewise.) Not a drunkard, in spite of the nickname, although sometimes that would make things easier to bear.
Only Ale returns tonight.
Grief almost strangles him, makes it hard to breathe. The room, warm and rowdy around him, seems to fade away, growing cold and distant and surreal.
He slides the pack off his back and wraps both arms around it to press it against his chest, a tremor tearing at his muscles, turning his grip unsteady.
He has brought back the weapons of his comrades for the funeral ceremonies.
Bodies get buried or burned, sometimes lost, sometimes left behind in ditches if times are hard. But weapons become markers in scared ground. Memorials that celebrate their owners, the warriors who wielded them, for centuries. Thus the dead of the Guard are honoured, and remembered.
A dozen guards have risen now, and Ale hears Rainn’s voice, keening, breaking with grief, somewhere out of sight. Vorn, the Bear, shoves his way through the crowd, heavy steps, harsh movements.
The guild leader stops in front of Ale. When Bear accepts the leather-wrapped bundle from Ale, his muscles strain with burden heavier than the weight of the weapons inside. He stares at Ale with a bleak expression for a long moment.
Then he raises his bushy brows in a frown, wordlessly commanding Ale to report.
The crowd around them has fallen silent, but even without voices there’s still noise whispering around them. Heavy breathing, restless movements, the muffled sounds of weeping. Oh, Rainn. Slender and sweet and deadly, first and last lover of Mather the White, swordmaiden and swan maiden of the guild.
“The Scriptor of Erbul has been murdered,” Ale says. “But not before appointing our Guard as the official Guard of the Lost Scribes.”
An edict that means their guild is now in charge of protecting the lives and possessions of said Scribes, and that they also have the right to declare guild wars in order to recover the Scribes’ possessions or any secret stolen from them.
But only of the Lost, which makes the undertaking somewhat tricky. Their whereabouts are unknown – hence the title. The Lost may be Scribes who were banned, actually got lost in the mundane meaning and disappeared in the wilderness, or Scribes fled and hidden away. But Mather said what is hidden, may be found, and what is lost, may be recovered. And Squirrel was sure that bans could be lifted.
“Was it worth it? Their lives?”
Ale returns the guild leader’s stare. “Mather thought so.”
He had no idea just how dangerous their mission was, and he’s not sure if that isn’t the reason Mather picked him to come along in the first place. His obliviousness may have kept him alive, while Karak hesitated at just the wrong moment. Thus, his staff was broken along with his spine.
And of course Ale had connections in Erbul, which they had needed. Lin, though she’d been conspicuously absent. Her cousin Temis, who’d helped them. And of course the city cats. Erbul, hot, humid, powerful, pernicious; a coastal city grown of three towns, spanning across three countries where their spheres of power meet – collide – condense – at the mouth of the mighty river Erbach. The City of Cats, of crooks and scoundrels, of turrets and tunnels, of libraries and scriptoriums. A city of secrets.
“How did you live?”
Ale winces, but he expected that question and so he lifts the ragged fringe of his shaggy brown hair that obscured his high forehead so far. The blue mark of an Untouchable means little here among the guild, but still some of them recoil, a few even taking a step backward, away from him. “An Unperson touched me.”
Genug didn’t just touch him. They sheltered his body with theirs, protected him, even as they unmade him, made him Untouchable – unkillable even for Assassins, even for Royal Guards, even for Death Herself, or so some stories claim.
He still remembers the weight and warmth of their body stretched out on top of him, their gown spilling over them both in waves of blue fabric, their perfume of cool smoke and crisp spice, their voice, low, urgent, full of regret.
Ale shakes himself, and faces Vorn-the-Bear; and Rowl, and Rainn, and the others. The Bear nods, and moves past him, carrying the weapons away for now. When the guild leader is gone, the others slowly turn away from Ale, sitting back down, reaching for mugs and cutlery again, picking up interrupted conversations. But the mood is subdued and the noise of the crowd remains muted.
Rowl allows Ale to sit against the wall, at the far end of the long table at the front of the room. A place that will permit him to escape, should Rainn decide to kill him on the spot, instead of waiting for explanations to come, and the first, cruel wave of grief to subside. A mug of beer, a bowl of stew with a slab of bread probably mean that Rowl himself reserves judgement, at least for the time being, for tonight. And he’s not the type to use poison.
The others at the long table settle down as well, but at a distance, or as much of a distance as is possible in the crowded common room of the Guard.
The Guard. Just “The Guard”, or sometimes, with a sneer, called the Common Guard. Not the Royal Guard or a Noble Guard. Not Bodyguards to be hired by politicians or celebrities, though they may accept such jobs individually. Not part of the troops, neither serving as Rearguard or Advance, certainly not Protectors of the Realm or Watchmen. But also not mere hired muscle, rabble rousers and robbers, highwaymen by another name.
Ale eats mechanically, because he’s hungry, but without an appetite. Tonight’s food is wasted on him. He looks around, but although he recognises most faces, he feels as if he doesn’t really see his comrades. He’s there, yet at the same time far away. Eventually he gets up and finds the way to his room.
He leaves the door unlocked. Perhaps he wants Rainn to come and find him.
But his sleep remains undisturbed, and then it is morning, and the guild gathers in the Great Hall before Bear leads the procession to the cemetery.
It is Ale’s duty to erect the memorials.
He stabs Squirrel’s dagger into a white boulder, softened for a moment by Ciel’s Black power.
He sticks the two halves of Karak’s staff into the ground, leaning against each other, a gleaming mahogany triangle over a patch of tiny, white, star-like flowers.
Finally, near the cliff, he plunges Mather’s long sword into the ground. A harsh, shrill noise rings out as metal crashes into rock and reverberates through the stones under their feet.
This is sacred ground, from the cliff to the crags behind the keep. No weapon will rust here, no wood, not even paper decays, as a book left open under an ancient pine tree proves. Sometimes words are the mightiest weapons, Karak used to say. But the book’s pages are empty and heavier than stone. Only a true heir of the guard remembered with that tome could read it and pick it up. This, however, happens rarely, in legends and fairy tales for the most part.
Ale, having fulfilled his duty, falls back and remains behind when the others return to the keep, to the banquet in the Great Hall, where there will be speeches and songs to honour the dead before tomorrow the Council convenes. The leaders of the Guard will have to decide on the next step of whatever Mather set into motion with their trip to Erbul. How to find and protect the Lost Scribes, or how to revenge them, and most of all: How to gain access to their secrets, the secrets that Mather thought important enough to die for.
He sits down next to Mather’s sword as if he wants to invite Rainn yet again to take revenge and free him from guilt and grief. He stares at the sky and the sea. Everything is gray today. He can barely make out the horizon, where clouds and waves mingle, gray touching gray. The air feels warm and moist, the day strangely temperate for this time of the year.
Ale thinks of Erbul, a home he loved and lost, of Squirrel and Karak and Mather, his family of the heart. And of strange Genug, their gray eyes, gray within gray within gray, silver almost white, stormy as the sea and the sky, slate so dark it’s almost black, and gray hair, too, although they didn’t look much older than forty, if that. A beautiful mouth.
“Alant,” they whispered. A smoky voice, low and soothing.
He wonders where they are. If he’ll ever see them again. What will happen now, to him, to the guild.
He knows that he’ll have to don the blue, ethereal robes of the Unpersons and Untouchables, fleeting as the wind, fluid like water. But he has no clue what happens then. If he will lose himself as he is now, if he will become they, and a part of them. He can’t remember if an Untouchable was a member of the guild before. He thinks, yes, but he isn’t sure. Or what the difference between Untouchable and Unperson is. If there is one; colloquially, most people use the terms as if they have the same meaning. Not He, not She. Them. Other.
But today he’s still allowed to rest, to grieve. To sit here and stare at the sea until it is time to make his own, personal markers, straight cuts in the flesh of his arm. Not deep enough to be dangerous. Just deep enough to scar, extending the pattern of straight, white stripes meandering up his left arm. He’s still young, there’s more than enough space on his left arm, and his right is still untouched. This is an old tradition, shared by many guilds across the kingdoms. Once he saw an ancient Watchman with both arms and legs ringed completely in white ridges, his eyes empty, as he stared into the distance in the middle of a crowd. But Ale still prefers the scars to the smooth skin of an Assassin or worse. Each scar proves that he cared, that he loved, that he lost.
He reaches for his dagger and honours Squirrel and Karak and Mather with his blood and with his pain. When the blood has dried on his arm, he knows he should return to the keep, to the Great Hall, to add his voice to those who celebrate there and reminisce.
But he stays where he is, sitting on the cliff, next to Mather’s sword. He stares at the sky and at the sea and waits for the stranglehold of grief to release him.
