Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow

solo. present day.

Open for Play
Brunnhold's college town, located inside the university grounds.

User avatar
Sednai
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:04 am
Topics: 10
Race: Human
Occupation: Resistance
Location: The Stacks
: "Cypress"
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Plot Notes
Writer: Quix
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Thu Aug 02, 2018 4:19 pm

Image
Roalis 58, 2718 ....
F
ifteen years.

Today was only a few days over fifteen years since she had watched him run from her, fifteen years since she had been betrayed. Fifteen years, but she could remember that day and the few months before it so vividly.

During her few short months on the streets of Vienda, Fahlo and Sednai had been close- no, inseparable. The two were the king and queen of Viendan streets for a time. They were thieves, and they were good at it. No pocket was safe from the duo. They had plans to give up their thrones among the street children, however; Fahlo and Sednai were saving money for new lives out of Vienda, and, well, they were almost there. Fahlo, however, saw that the two had enough for one immediate ticket, and he took the opportunity to leave, and leave Sednai with nothing of what they had- money, food, clothes, and companionship.

As poorly as she viewed the months now, they had been a few months of true happiness, adventure, and childhood. She had mattered, she had learned how to live for herself, not for some galdor master.

She wondered what fifteen years had done to his face. The boy she had known was now 32, and she couldn't possibly imagine that the stern, skinny face the boy had had in childhood was the same now. She could remember the very placement of the freckled islands on the map of his face, the angle at which his smirk sat in his thin lips, and the way his red locks framed his portrait like curtains. She wondered how different he would be as she gazed across the stony road from the shade of a generous market awning. She had come to the very spot three times this week alone, unable to convince herself to cross the street, to cross the street and open the door of the herb and spice shop across the road, to cross the street and open the door and find that man and tell him that she was Sednai Igaluk and- and...

Well, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Today, however, was the day that she’d cross the road, feeling the uneven cobblestones poke through the thin soles of her shoes. She’d stroll up to the shop, glancing up at the red sign that read “Lovage and Marjoram, Herbs and Spices.” She’d smile lightly at the convenient last names. She had always told Fahlo that, with a last name like Lovage, he was made to sell the herb. She’d push open the warm wooden door, the earthy and comforting smell of herbs and spices welcoming her into the room brightly illuminated by a skylight. Shelves would surround her full of bottles of dried leaves and seeds, and she’d stroll across the wooden floor to the counter, ringing the small bell there. The bell rang, and Sednai jumped. She wasn’t pre-planning the situation, oh, no, she was in the room, and the ringing of the bell had trapped her in the situation. She bit her lip, nervous for who would come in. from the curtained back room behind the counter. She could hear feet approaching from behind the curtain, and she busied herself with looking around the room nervously. She picked up a jar of bay leaves from the shelf farthest from the counter.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

Sednai looked up, and, had her nerves not been forcing her to hold the jar in white-knuckled hands, she would have dropped it. There, behind the counter, was Fahlo, unaged. His blue eyes still sparkled, his skinny face was still covered in an archipelago of freckles, the right sound of his mouth still rose higher than the left from beneath his red hair.

“Fahlo?” she asked, her mouth dry. Was she hallucinating? She must be. She had to be. She hoped she was.

“Oh, I’ll get him. Just wait here,” the boy nodded, turning back to the backroom. In a moment, he returned, this time with an older man.

“Here, Dad, she wanted to see you,” the boy said to the man. The man gazed at her, his blue eyes tired. His hair was still bright red, his face still freckled. His body had lost its boyish gangly-ness, but he was still young, handsome. Sednai smiled shyly. She couldn’t believe it was him.

“Fahlo, it’s me,” she shrugged, unable to wipe a grin off of her face as a warmth grew inside of her.

He didn't recognize her.
Last edited by Sednai on Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:01 pm, edited 4 times in total.

BURNED, NOT BURIED.

Tags:
User avatar
Sednai
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:04 am
Topics: 10
Race: Human
Occupation: Resistance
Location: The Stacks
: "Cypress"
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Plot Notes
Writer: Quix
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Wed Aug 15, 2018 6:22 pm

Image
Roalis 58, 2718 ....
Sednai merely blinked at the lack of recognition and the overwhelming suspicion on the man’s face. Her smile still remained, but it was more hollow, more scared now. There was no way he had completely forgotten her, no. Fifteen years was a long time- perhaps he simply didn’t recognize her. She shook her head slightly and persisted.

“I’m Sednai Igaluk,” she tried, more fragility lacing her voice. She brushed her hair away from her neck to reveal the scar of her brand, hoping it would trigger some recognition. Fahlo stared at her blankly, arms folded across his chest.

“You... you don’t remember,” she concluded to herself, her voice as small and light as a butterfly. She turned her eyes to the floor, a pain tightening her dry throat. For over half of her life, she had obsessed over finding this boy. In the beginning, she had wanted to find him, club him in the side of his head, and accost him with rage he had left her with. Yet, time has a way of diluting anger. As the years passed, so did her anger. Today she had come with excitement to find her friend, to reunite with one of the few people who had ever made her feel like she had mattered.

But she didn’t matter to him. Her face wouldn’t stick out in the crowd or his dreams, he hadn’t ever wondered where she was.

Sednai inhaled shakily. She looked around the room, not looking into the face of Fahlo and his young copy. She was drowning, and the door, the door was the shore! She turned away, her eyes stinging with tears. She sniffled obnoxiously, but she wasn’t going to cry, not until she got to the door. She reached out to the knob, the final obstacle, her throat too tight for her to voice a farewell.

“Wait, Miss.”

She hesitated, her fingers grazing the door knob. She didn’t turn back. The floorboards creaked, and the indistinguishable sound of whispers met her ears. She straightened up from the door way, wiping her eyes frantically before turning. Fahlo had taken a seat behind the desk, coaxed by his son who now approached her. His fingers were laced before him, and his eyes were drawn to the floor.

“I- my father knew you,” the boy started. “Or, he may’ve. He never talked about you, Sednai.”

She glanced back at Fahlo who watched pensively from afar.

“Can’t he speak for himself?” she asked bluntly. It wasn’t rude to her; she wasn’t one to beat around the bush. The boy, however, recoiled slightly. He looked back at his father, then sighed.

“He can't say much more than 'Marjoram' or a handful of stories he recites. He sings, too, but can’t remember a damn thing about his life before me and my mum.”

“What happened?” she asked quickly.

The boy looked pained at the question. “Well, ma’am, my mother was a galdor. A high up one, at that. She decided to get hammered in a bar when she was young, and then she hooked up with a human. Wasn’t a problem on his part, my dad didn’t care too much about race, but when you’re a nice galdor lady suddenly pregnant by a human, it ain’t good. She made sure he got a good beating.”

“Too good of one,” Sednai added. She had heard of brains getting so shook up that they forgot. And here was Fahlo, a man dead to the world with all the benefits of living. Here was a man who had no memory. He had been born the moment he had awoken from his beating, suddenly in the care of a child he didn’t know, and he didn’t know anything about himself.

"I've been waiting to meet him again for 15 years, waiting to relive the memories, reignite the dyanmic duo we were," she nearly whispered. The boy watched her carefully.

"You were friends?"

"Best friends. We were the King and Queen of the Viendan str-"

"Wait," he interrupted. She looked at the boy queerly. "You should tell them to him. He may not remember or respond, but he'd like to hear it, I know it. I would, too," he suggested dearly. He walked over to the desk Fahlo sat behind, disappearing momentarily into the backroom for another chair. He sat it behind the desk beside Fahlo, and motioned for her to come sit.

For a moment, she was gripped by fear. She had a small sliver of hope that her stories would heal him, would bring his memory back. The fear, however, stemmed from the failure of such. She was nearly doomed to fail, but, to know that Fahlo was truly completely gone haunted her. She looked at the boy. He had lived his whole life with a father who couldn't say his name, couldn't tell him about his mother, couldn't tell the boy of his own boyhood. She could be strong for a moment.

She smiled at Fahlo as she sat beside him, adjusting her skirts quite nervously with long fingers.

"Hello, Fahlo," she began. "My name is Sednai Igaluk, and you were my best friend."

BURNED, NOT BURIED.
User avatar
Sednai
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:04 am
Topics: 10
Race: Human
Occupation: Resistance
Location: The Stacks
: "Cypress"
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Plot Notes
Writer: Quix
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:47 pm

Image
Roalis 58, 2718 ....
Fahlo stared at her, his grey-blue eyes blank and uninterested. She looked to the boy, who stood beside her for encouragement, and he nodded vigorously. She took a calming breath in through her nose, releasing it through her lips. She smiled again, scooting to the edge of the hard chair and placing her folded hands in the hammock created by the fabric of her skirt between her knees.

“You found me alone on the Vienda streets one night in Achtus. It was raining a bitterly cold rain, the kind that soaks right through your clothes, right through your skin and bones to your insides. I was sitting on a step and shiverin’ liked I’d just seen a ghost, and you was just passing by, just minding your own business, but you let my business become your business, and you sat down on the step beside me and offered me the thinnest but warmest coat I’d ever worn. I was shakin’ too much to offer you a word, but you grabbed my clammy and pruny hand in yours and you led me under the balconies, through the dark streets, back to your hideout, this awfully secret place you didn’t share with just anybody. There were all these little boys counting their coins and punching each other and sitting around the fire and drinking fiery spirits, and you pulled me right through them to the fire. And these boys says every mean thing they can think, but you sit by the fire with me. You ain’t say a word to me, and I ain’t say a word to you. But we know. We got an agreement. We’re gonna look out for each other. We sit by that fire well into the night, well after the embers die out and all the ugly little beasty brats go to sleep around us. Then you talk, and you tell me who you are and what you want and I say who I am and that I think we can be real good friends but even better business partners, and you agree,” Sednai reminisced animatedly, barely taking a moment to breathe. Marjoram, the boy, was completely invested, curiosity seeping from his half-opened mouth. Fahlo still stared, uninterested, unamused, but, perhaps for her own sanity, Sednai persisted.

“After that night, we took to the streets regularly. You was well-known as the Street King, and with some good training and a few of my own tricks, I became the Street King. We was pickpockets, you see? We had all kinds of clever executions we’d go through to get money, like you’d stoop to pick something up in front of someone, and when they suddenly stopped, I’d run right into them and investigate their pockets in the same moment. We had a plan, you and me. We was gonna run off when we got enough money, run off to somewhere where we could have better lives, where we could leave our crowns to rust on the streets. We were going to get on the airship and not get off until they made us, then we’d go from there. It dint work out like that, though. ‘Else you’d be rememberin’ it with me, I suppose,” she trailed off, thinking of the could-haves and should-haves of the situation. They could have escaped, and they should have ran off while they could. “You definitely don’t remember this next part, but I’ve been thinking ‘bout it every day since.”

She sighed. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to tell Fahlo’s son what his father had done to her in childhood, but she supposed that it was partly thanks to him leaving that Marjoram even existed. Had they run off to whatever destination, that’d be her son in front of her, wouldn’t it? Fahlo would have his memory, Marjoram would have his parents, and she’d have a beautiful human son.

To think one little decision so long ago could bring such a vast difference in so many lives- in Fahlo’s, in Marjoram’s, in his galdor mother, in Sednai’s.

“You left me, Fahlo. Ain’t a hint beforehand. You just pushed me to the ground and ran off with all the money we had saved. We was so close to leaving together, and you decided you couldn’t wait. I was awful mad and sad and I sat there and cried for an awful long time,” her words were rushed, and she clutched the key to the music box hanging around her neck. As she sat and cried angry tears as Fahlo left, a boy had come up to her, had giving her a gift of a music box he had made to comfort her and to encourage their friendship. She had, in that instant, decided that she wanted to find Fahlo again, to clobber him and get her money back before forgiving him. Years passed, however, and she was here now, not asking for money or an apology. She was just so glad to see her best friend after so many years.

BURNED, NOT BURIED.
User avatar
Sednai
Posts: 66
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:04 am
Topics: 10
Race: Human
Occupation: Resistance
Location: The Stacks
: "Cypress"
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Plot Notes
Writer: Quix
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:50 pm

Image
Roalis 58, 2718 ....
Sednai sighed, watching her hands as her fingers danced absentmindedly in her lap. She looked up, yet, her eyes weren’t searching for Fahlo’s reaction. It wouldn’t come. The recognition, the love, the thankfulness, the apology would not come. This man was not Fahlo, not now. The Fahlo she had known had been beaten and scared out of him, perhaps forever. Where he was was not for Sednai to know. Was there a scared man trapped in blank walls, able to see the world happen to him but unable to happen to the world? Was he floating alone in a void, unsure where he was or who he would become? Sednai did not know. The whole situation, relationship, was a large jumble of questions that Sednai did not have the answers to and suspected she would not have the answers to. As Sednai looked up from her lap, she did not look at Fahlo. She looked at Marjoram.

Marjoram looked as though he had been yelled at, but Sednai offered him a weak smile.

“You look just like your dad,” she nearly whispered as if, too loud, Fahlo would hear her and know. “Don’t act too much like him, though. We both woulda been better off if we had had a good friend like you, responsible and caring and such.”

“’Cept, cain’t be too much fun bein’ all responsible for everyone else your whole early life. You went and grown up before you even had a chance to be a kid, walkin’ ‘fore you even took a second to crawl,” Sednai described her hypothesis, keeping hold of Marjoram’s eyes and attention despite how the boy squirmed under the searchlights of her gaze.

She took a deep breath. In this very moment, Sednai Igaluk had a choice. Sednai could leave this boy, this house, and this shell of a man, never to think about them again, never to be troubled by their troubles in the future. She could also, however, make an offer.

“I wanna make you an offer, Mr. Marjoram Lovage,” she declared, smoothing the wrinkles in her worn skirt with long fingers.

“What do you mean?” he finally replied, voice dry and quiet.

“I wanna help you and yours. Give you some time off where ya don’t gotta worry ‘bout what yer dad is off doin’ and whether or not he’s safe or lost or scared or hungry or hurt. I can worry ‘bout those things, an’ you can go off an’ be a kid, y’know? You can go out in the market and the streets and make some friends. An’ you can come home and yer dad will be all takin’ care of an’ I can make some dinner for ya. You ain’t have to worry about yer dad or yerself, maybe just fer a bit of time, y’know? Just a few seconds in yer life, you can be still,” she rambled, trying to explain herself thoroughly. The fabric of her skirt was tight in her hands as she searched for the words, any words, to explain herself. She wasn’t sure if she had said what she wanted- or, well, what she had said was already leaving her- but she looked up into Majoram’s face for some approval or disapproval.

Marjoram paused, his very actions and reactions completely still as he pondered. His bottom lip was tucked beneath his large front teeth, brows high under the jungle of orange hair. His eyes escaped to every other place in the world except the tiny corner, the tiny window that was her eyes until every inch of the room had been searched and his eyes found hers.

“You’ll do that? You’re not going to leave after this and never come back? You’re not going to disappear into the crowd and never think of me again? You’re not going to take my dad and run away? You’re not going to kill my dad and lock me out? None of that?” he asked a storm of questions quickly, brows falling in scrutiny like an orange draw bridge over blue pools.

“None of that, Marjoram,” she whispered, but his scrutiny did not leave. She had to give more. “Look, Marjoram,” she started, shoulders falling slightly as she deflated with a sigh. “I-I been in love with your daddy since we were jus’ kids pickin’ pockets an’ makin’ dreams. I tried to say it wasn’t true for fifteen years,” she glanced over at Fahlo, “but I seen ‘im today an’ never felt my heart beat so big. I know, though, that that ain’ the Fahlo I know’d, the Fahlo I was lovin’ a different Fahlo than your daddy right there.” Her eyes found Marjoram again. “But you, you remind me of your daddy, and he woul’n’t want him or you or anyone to be tied down by him forever, ‘specially from childhood. Fahlo an’ I had a good childhood, and we became who we are today, or who we were before because of childhood. All you’re ever gonna become here is your daddy’s caretaker. I already become someone, I already know who I am, I can take care of your daddy an’ you can become who you need to become.”

Marjoram sighed.

“I’ve been doing this alone since I was born. No one else ever wanted the burden of a man in vegetative state, a little boy, and their business. I’ve been hoping someone would come along, you know, one day, but I was also so scared for that to happen.” He looked over at his father, and took the man’s hand. The elder man turned slightly to stare at Marjoram.

“Sometimes when he’s a little more conscious, he whispers about the streets and pickpockets and the King and Queen. I always thought it was just some silly tale someone had told him that he remembered,” Marjoram was nearly whispering now, and he clasped his father’s hand with the other. Fahlo had perked up slightly as he heard his own words and tales fragmented in his son’s voice. “He always said it with such a smile, always more animated than I ever saw him.”

“You’re why, aren’t you? He loved you. He still does, still knows that there’s some shadow of a person in those broken and faded memories that he loves, and that’s why they make him so happy, that’s why he remembers. Emotion. Love. He remembers you, somewhere. I’m sure of it,” Marjoram turned to Sednai again, his blue eyes on the verge of spilling down his face. Instinctively, Sednai stood, and the boy rushed to her. She held him as he cried, a shaking boy who had found a piece of the father he never knew.

Fahlo still looked on, watching the two of them. Yet, Sednai swore the edges of his mouth flicked upwards ever so slightly. She smiled.

Fin.

BURNED, NOT BURIED.
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “The Stacks”

  • Information
  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests