WOVEN DELIGHTS | MORNING
Dwarfism, that’s what one of those witches had called it. The stunting of something inside of him that made his body shorter than it was supposed to be. She’d pitied him too, tsked and told his father it was a shame. A hard life, best to end it before adulthood. Before getting too attached.
Maybe his father saw something of his mother in him. Maybe he just needed a hand to help in the meager bakery they ran in Vienda.
Either way, Tobias had lived his life up until his thirteenth year midst the smells of bread and pastries, until his father had sent him on his way with a bag of rations and a couple of coins. The Soot District had laughed him off, and the street beggars chased him away. Low, the lowest he could have possibly imagined himself to be, Tobias had stood on the Vienda Bridge and contemplated the end.
What use was their for someone like him in a world where even passives seemed to be more accepted than himself?
You need a hand over that railing, or you carrying a stool in that bag?
Those were the first words he’d heard from Jon Serro, and Tobias would never forget them. The man, towering and stoic with his eyepatch and greying hair, stood beside him on that bridge like some sort of ghost appearing out of nowhere. The teenager had been taken aback at first, before the human looked down, and smirked.
And that was how Tobias found himself recruited into the Resistance.
He’d been skeptical at first, concerned that he’d become some sort of side-show freak for their entertainment, but with Jon’s blessing the young man was welcomed into the fold. They didn’t look at his physical limitations, instead they discovered under all that strangeness, Tobias had a keen mind and was a quick study. He was quickly taken in by the code-breakers cell and learned the art of hidden messages and communicating right under the galdori noses. It was easy for him, and fun, and eventually he found himself surpassing his teachers. Jon had him assigned to missions and Alyssa had given him praise and suddenly Tobias wasn’t an outsider. He was one of them.
He belonged.
That had been three years ago. Three fantastic years ago. And then not too much more than just a season ago, the news had broken.
Awful, horrific, heart wrenching news.
Jon Serro was dead.
Tobias wasn’t afraid to cry. He’d sobbed his sixteen year old heart out, and Ginny, his like aged compatriot had cried right along with him. He liked Ginny. She didn’t care about how he looked at all, and treated him like everyone else. Crying with Ginny had been good. They’d told tales of Jon and how he’d brought them into the fold, and had looked in wide eyed awe when Alyssa had taken up the mantle. And then, things had been quiet.
Sort of.
There were talks of a new general, a large red haired wick who’d been recruited by the Wisp to teach people how to go to war. But Tobias wasn’t for war. Not with guns and knives and things. Not with explosives like Ginny. And there’d been some whispers of a revolution, a new leadership. But no one said it out loud, because Alyssa was scary.
Then there was the girl. The one that Jon had kidnapped. She seemed so unhappy, for the brief moment Tobias had seen her. And then she’d disappeared again. He wondered if she was dead too. Maybe Jon tried to show her to the Judge, and maybe he’d killed them both. The code-breaker did what he did best, he kept his nose in his books and his codes, and did the odd jobs when they came in. He helped around the How and with the Book and Bell.
And then, on this chilly Dentis day, someone had requested for a code breaker. A good one. One that could be trusted not to make any mistakes at all. So he had dressed in a childs clothing, a jaunty hat to cover his head and a thick coat to cover his deformities, and he had made his way to the quaint fabric shop that he’d been told to attend.
Woven Delights.
Tobias huffed on his ungloved hands as he stood outside of the large bay window, his blue-green eyes taking in the elegant display of fabric and jewels. This was very fancy. Maybe it was the wrong place. He looked up again at the sign over the door. Nope, it definitely said what it was supposed to say. Reaching up for the handle, the small teenager pushed the door open, little bell tinkling to notify his entrance.
“’scuse me, is there anyone about? I got an order to place for my mistress.” He called out in a voice not yet broken by puberty, the door swinging shut behind him, rocking onto his toes to look around the pretty fabric shop.