[Closed] Walls I Cannot Climb

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

H

e found that he could not bear to say. It had seemed such a great and shameful thing as a boy; he had resolved to forget all about it. And now, it seemed the smallest thing in the world – why should he not have asked, as insistently as he had asked everything else, what became of Henrietta? The poor stuffed hingle had been important to her; why had they laughed at him for asking that it be safekept?

Morandi realized that it had been easier to be wrong. To be right about having been wrong. Sitting here with proof of the impossible by his side – pressed warmly, comfortably against his shoulder, a very different sort of weight from ten years ago – was much more difficult. Not knowing what he felt, but feeling it anyway – was much, much more difficult.

But there was something terribly mundane about the embarrassment he felt when she spoke again, and he turned his head just a little to see that soft fond smile on her face. Of course she remembered, he thought, chagrinned. She remembered a great deal of things.

Shadow stirred behind them, grunting. There was already dog hair on the lovely quilt, no doubt. Pup was properly dry now, and had that ridiculous puffed look of recently-bathed dogs.

To sentimental he was not sure he could argue; his life rather depended upon her sentimentality. And nursery magic was something he had wished more than once existed, for all the good it might have done them.

It was what she said next that struck him to his very heart. His eyes widened slightly, and he looked down and away, the lump in his throat now impossible to swallow, though he tried.

“Yes,” he said haltingly, harsh with the difficulty of speaking. He drew in another deep breath, reminding himself of his training; he straightened, though he did not lean away. “Love is – indeed – most painful.”

And what would you know of love, Inspector? It is hardly as if you have ever felt it.

There was a small, brisk smile on his face when he looked over and down at her, lifting his brows. “You have not changed your mind about that, then,” he said, his voice even. He supposed she had not had much opportunity to, although he wondered now what she knew of love. Looking at her now and thinking just how little he knew, it was a very strange thought.

“I did not, I recall – ah – appreciate the sentiment, in which… parting… seemed a necessity,” he said, glancing back toward the window. Of course, it might not have been the best story to read to a silly, sentimental boy on his sickbed; retrospectively, the parts about disinfecting and burning all of one’s possessions might have struck him somewhat ghoulishly. “Most of the stories about love were so, were they not?”

Blockhead Hans not included, he supposed, turning another few pages. But he had a firm, well-worn feeling that was not the sort of story which Aurelie meant.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

The man her friend had become was quite possibly none too pleased to hear that she remembered his distress at this particular story. Aurelie wasn't certain; he said nothing, and she didn't ask. She did remember, as she remembered all sorts of things that were likely best forgotten. She couldn't seem to forget them, no matter how often she resolved to try. Sentimental, she'd called herself, and Desiderio hadn't argued.

She was still looking at his face while she spoke, so she saw the way his eyes widened behind the frames of his glasses before he looked away. Like he'd been struck when he wasn't expecting it. He didn't, however, laugh or dismiss what she said. As strange and silly as it probably was; Aurelie's thoughtful frown turned back into a smile.

Very few people would take her so seriously, now and in the past, talking like this. She ought to feel—embarrassed, going on like this to a man who she really only barely knew. And certainly she did, but it was overwhelmed entirely by the soft fondness that spread out in her heart that this much hadn't changed, no matter what either of them were or had become.

When he spoke it was haltingly, and as if it cost him greatly to do so. Love—what right had she, going on about it...? Well, there were all sorts of love. And she had never suffered from a lack of feeling it for others. For a moment she wondered who he was thinking of, as inappropriate as it was to wonder. Then—she didn't need to wonder, did she? He was engaged, she reminded herself, and thought of that morning. Yes, she rather thought she knew.

"No," she confirmed, brushing off the strange pang that put in her heart, "I haven't. If anything, I... Well." This was strange, sitting on her bedspread (increasingly covered in dog hair, she was certain) and talking to her oldest friend about the painful nature of love. As expressed, she thought with some small degree of amusement, by boys and their stuffed rabbits.

At least Desiderio was smiling now, if only slightly. It was a look she did her best to study and keep, folded up in her heart with all the rest. She didn't think she would see it often. Or much of any smiling, really.

Now that she was older, she did wonder at thinking of telling a story like that to Desiderio, who was rather sick himself, considering the fate of the poor little rabbit. She didn't regret it quite, but it did seem... well, slightly cruel, really. The whole thing had made her terribly sad, too; she might have liked that about telling it to him. They could be sad together; there was something pleasing in that, wasn't there?

"All of the good ones," she agreed, looking down to watch him turn the pages of her book of their stories. Love of some kind featured in most of them, but there were some stories where it seemed to be more of the point than others. Those were the painful ones, and the ones that stuck with her the most strongly. "How else will you know love for true, if there's no suffering in it?" She was almost teasing when she said it, looking back up to Desiderio's face.

"That is, ah... T-the ones I know, anyway. I..." The embarrassment that had been held at bay came to her now, seemingly all at once. What did she know of love? Prattling on like this—she wasn't that overly-enthusiastic child she had been, and ought to know better now.

Moreover, what did she know of stories? She felt the most acute shame, thinking of telling him that these were most of the stories she knew. That she'd never read any others; they both knew, she thought, that it wasn't allowed to her. Aurelie didn't think of it often enough to have become accustomed to the shame of the idea, so when it struck her, it did so with full force.

"Which was your favorite? I-I'm not sure I recall rightly," she asked, trying her best to ignore the feeling. She doubted he expected... She didn't know what he expected, and it didn't matter. Not at this moment; Aurelie was happy, sitting here and talking about the past together. Thinking too much on things like this would only spoil it.

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

I

f anything. “Huh,” he replied, a short, clipped exhale, not quite a laugh but not quite anything else, either.

How else will you know love for true, if there’s no suffering in it?

What a strange thing to come from Aurelie Steerpike, the girl he had once known, who was now not so much a girl as a woman. So much like, and so much unlike, that girl. He wondered how she could say it so teasingly; he felt almost pinned by her warm green eyes, pinned and oddly light-headed.

He thought about it, too. He could not seem to do otherwise. “I dare say you have a point,” he said before he could stop himself. “We have a saying in Bastia –” He spoke a line in Bastian Estuan, sharp and rolling. “All of Her things, fine and beautiful things, are terrible,” he translated gravely. “Love most of all, I presume.”

All at once he found himself thinking – not of their stories, but of Adelaide Boisselot’s latest novel, the first volume of which he had bought recently at a stall in Kingsway and had read furtively on a stakeout. It had ended on a wretched cliffhanger: driven near mad by a false report of her love dead at sea, with no choice but to marry the wicked Duke Crémieux, the daring Isabeau had cast herself from the parapet… When it had ended there, he had nearly cast the cheaply-bound thing out the window.

It was a very silly thing to think of, but the moment he thought of it, he could not seem to scrub out the connection. He felt a warm prickling in the tips of his ears, and was again terribly aware of her hip just brushing his on the bed.

He could have said a great number of things – about how the heroine’s first kiss was never quite so exciting to him as when preceded by a great deal of trial and tribulation, and why he preferred the novels, and the heroines, and the heroes, that he did. (The second volume of Isabeau’s story was in his bag right now, he realized suddenly; he had been meaning to get his claws into it before the ordeal in the market, and…)

The thought of Aurelie knowing that curdled his heart. It was strange enough to be speaking of love stories to a young woman, being – who he was – but surely she could not approve of him reading that sort of nonsense. And he found he cared rather a lot about what she approved and what she did not.

What she said next, trailing off, distracted him momentarily from his self-consciousness. He looked over, frowning.

When she changed the subject minutely, it came as a surprise; his frown deepened slightly, and he glanced away from her, confused. For a moment, he had thought the ones I know, anyway had referred to – well – to love, or to – lovers.

Foolish! Foolish and preoccupied. He felt a horrible pang, realizing what she had meant, looking down at the book in his hands. At the only book she had kept for ten years.

(Did that mean–? He wondered, feeling stranger and stranger – she could read, of course; she had been able to read as a little girl, and she had read this book many a time since. Gated servants were permitted books, he knew, and writing, so long as they did not encourage the wrong sorts of… He tried not to think about it, that strange gulf between them, but it crept back. Nobody had taught her her letters since she was ten.)

“My favorite? Ah –” His voice caught. Put on the spot, he could only stare down at an illustration he could not remember turning the page to: a young woman dissolving in seafoam, morning sun just breaking across the waves. Troubled, he turned the page carefully. “Do you recall the White Cat?” The words felt strange on his tongue; he had not said them in a very long time, and had scarce known they would come out of his mouth before they did.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

Funny; Aurelie knew she had to have heard Bastian Estuan in the last ten years or so—a visiting lecturer or an exchange student, perhaps, or even just out on a rare errand. As Desiderio spoke, though, it felt as if she had never heard a word of it before, not like this. His accent, perhaps; Aurelie thought again of waking him up this morning, and all of the inappropriate sorts of feelings that came after that.

It was worse somehow when he translated it for her. That serious face, that grave voice, telling her a Bastian saying about beauty and love. For a moment Aurelie could think only that she had dug her own grave. Her cheeks felt unaccountably warm, and she was forced to look away. "O-Oh yes, I would... I certainly would think so."

A ridiculous thing to say; well, she felt ridiculous suddenly. Prattling on about stories and love, when she hadn't made it even halfway through the book that Aremu had helped her choose before she left. He hadn't said anything, not a single word, but Aurelie knew he'd noticed her struggling to get through it. The idea of leaving it behind was almost a relief.

(Of love, romantic in particular, she knew very little—cowardice and heartbreak, but those were hardly the same.)

She drifted off, as was her habit. Desiderio turned to look at her, and the weight of his eyes was almost too much for her to bear. An acid voice in her heart spoke up: even were he not engaged, which he was, even if... She could hardly read. She ought to stick to being furniture, to being useful. She knew how to be that, at least. Less so a friend. Less so anything to Desiderio, anymore. Aurelie tried to ignore it, but it was there, quietly whispering.

Perhaps she was desperate to find some thread onto which she could hold, and that's why she asked as inelegantly as she had. He seemed surprised; she could almost remember, it was on the tip of her tongue. When had she forgotten? She had known once, hadn't she? Such an important thing, and it had slipped her mind.

The page turned; it was the little mermaid, becoming seafoam in the morning sun. And each step she took would feel like walking on knives, Aurelie remembered, vividly. The pain of love, indeed—she had never liked that one, where the poor mermaid hadn't even found love for all her suffering. She didn't like when reality intruded too heavily in tales. (The illustrations were so beautiful, though, she'd not been able to look away either. Aurelie remembered declaring that they ought to write her a new, better ending.)

"Oh! Yes, that one! I had very nearly forgotten." Aurelie had liked that one too, though it was somewhat terrifying. Things had turned out all right in the end, but she couldn't imagine the prince felt too good about it, having to hurt his dear friend. Not even at her own request. "T-That one isn't particularly cheerful either," she accused, trying to tease.

"That's the one about the prince who has to find... Oh, what was it? I'm afraid I don't remember the details," she admitted ruefully, forgetting to be quite so ashamed of herself as she had been. Desiderio was still here, solid and steady at her shoulder. She ought to be grateful enough to leave it at that.