[Wild Roses]
following from here. 1664 words in this section.
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It took a few moment of panting in the dark for him to start thinking again, reach back to shut the water off and flex his shoulders to see if water had worn through skin. Standing up, he had to grab for the curve of the rod and the wall to keep himself from falling down again, hissed through his teeth as blood rushed down the inside of his legs as water rushed down the cloth around them.
He found his shirt when he stepped out of the shower. It wicked up a fair amount of water before he realised what the crumpled mass of fabric under his foot was, and he contemplated it for a moment, dripping and beginning to shiver in the cooler air, his head pounding in time with his pulse, then gave up. Stripped off the remains of his soaking clothing, half-heartedly wrung them out over the drain and then flung everything--pants, shirt, underwear and the sock he could find without effort--over the rod that held up the water shield to dry.
Wrapped in the thin blanket he'd meant to use for a towel, itself damp from long hours next to a running shower, he made his way to the kitchen. The sun shining off the glass of the kitchen windows made him hiss again in different pain as he crossed the room, then stuck his head in the icebox until his ears went numb. Better dark and cold than too hot and trying to keep his eyes closed against the light.
He'd lost feeling completely in his ears by the time his brain started waking up again, and he reached up to break off a large piece of the thick ice lining the box. Eyes firmly closed and navigating entirely by memory, he stuck the shard in the bag the dragon-faced woman had used for the root vegetables, and held it against his head, fabric bunched up so he didn't freeze his fingers. His wet hair crackled slightly when he set the bag against it, which would have been slightly amusing if he'd been in a better mood.
The calluses on his hands and feet had actually gone soft from the water, he noticed when he sat down at the chair facing away from the window and took mental stock, as much as he could around the headache.
It was morning, according to the sun outside the windows--he reached automatically for curses and came up distressingly blank before returning to the list--and while he might have misplaced a day in the middle, he didn't really think he had. His skin looked like one giant dried fruit, skin wrinkled and puckered from the water, not bloated, and he hadn't fouled his clothing.
The sun chose that moment to glance off the window and reflect off a metal cabinet pull, bright enough to feel like a stick in his eye, and he cursed, jerking a hand up to block the reflection and dislodging the ice from his head.
" . . . Fuck this," he muttered as he rose, left the icepack on the table and stalked over towards the window, blanket trailing from one hand.
There was a drape-rod over the windows, curling elegant winter-bare branch to match the bars across the outside of the glass. It was also far enough out from the wall it was bolted to that he could fling the blanket over the rod, yank down on the short end to keep it there, and instantly darken the room to toffee and chocolate instead of white and gold. The blanket was streaked with the water it'd picked up from his skin, abstract darker patterns on the fabric, but he didn't care.
He thought about sitting down again, naked against the wooden chairs, then turned away.
The bedroom was blessedly twilit, dusty drapes from other inhabitants pulled full across the unseen window frame. He only bothered to half dress, pulling clothing from the rucksack he hadn't gotten around to completely unpacking what-he-thought-was-yesterday and flinging the extras on the floor instead of the bed. The trousers were too long, and he rolled them up to keep from stumbling, not trusting shaking hands to handle a knife bloodlessly.
He came back to the kitchen on slightly shaky feet, sat down again, put his head back down on the puddle of melting ice, hands pressing on the back of his head like the pressure might help keep his brains inside. The cold dulled the pain some, enough that he could stop thinking for at least a little while.
His stomach grumbled eventually, loudly enough to set his head throbbing again. The ice was near-melted anyway, so he rose, wrung out the sack over the sink, laid it out to dry a bit before he put another piece of ice in.
One of the earthenware pots contained blocks of soft cheese, which he spread thick on a slice of bread to eat while going through the rest of the supplies, looking for other easy things to eat. While he had found a dish-scrubber in the drawer nearest the sink, he didn't relish the idea of needing to use it, high grating noise on his still aching ears.
Honey, then, and more cheese, the only thing dirtied his longer knife and the counter he was cutting bread on. He accidentally cracked the jar of honey when he broke the wax seal, hand gripping a little too tight, and after a second of dumb staring he gave up and ate the whole thing on the rest of the loaf of bread.
'If I come back and find you laughing,' he thought as clearly as he could, holding an image of a long coat and guitar case in his head, mouth full of the bread's heel and sticky-sweet wildflower honey, 'I'm hitting you again.'
He probably imagined the smile. Ignored it in any event, resealing the cheese and setting it in the warmer section of the icebox to keep.
Considered the kitchen for a long moment, then went back to the bedroom, flopped down on top of the covers, folded his arms across his stomach, and reached out again.
Reaching bought him the roof of the Keep itself, this time, something kin to a coming storm carrying the music around in gusts and flurries of sound. He was alone, at least for a little while, the doors he could see from where he stood barred with rust-red iron thrust through the hinges. Not enough to keep out a really determined Sabaey, but since this was his own head and his own images he'd have no ghostly company.
"Not here," his father said from behind him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Turned to face his father, who'd apparently dropped out of the music and the air, the edges of his coat tattered and waving in the wind.
"Why not here?" he asked, half inclined to ignore whatever reply his father gave--he liked the top of the Keep. In the privacy of his own head, he could let his own likes and preferences rule.
"They found your aunt Joveta there--" his father nodded to a section of stone by one of the edging walls, the music in the wind briefly flinging up a flurry of woodwinds and a lone trumpet, then lifting into brass and a snare drum as he turned and gestured to another piece of stone "--my son Logan there." The music faded entirely for a long moment, leaving just the echo of wind over rock. "I don't think I could concentrate here."
He had to nod, acknowledging, and on his next in-taken breath they were somewhere else.
Blinked as moving shapes registered, then he was moving, cutting beneath a faceless, blurry woman carrying a tray to put his back to a wall, heart hammering in his chest. By the time he could slow his heart down, his father had risen from a group of other blurred human-size shapes, brushing his hand in a near-farewell to an instrument case that wasn't the one on his back, continuing the motion to a bared, freckled shoulder that stood out oddly clear in the room.
It wasn't one of the Manannans' drinking spaces, down by the docks, nor one of the merchant fleets' bars, he thought, pulling at music that sounded like whispering, faraway voices. Someplace far away, perhaps, one of his father's long-ago haunts in the years between being banished and coming home.
" . . . not here, either," he said, after he let go, straightening up from a defensive hunch.
His father raised an inquiring eyebrow, one hand pressed to a solid wooden table.
"Not unless you want me to be concentrating on the movement around us, instead of what I hear," he clarified, smiling a little wry. Of all people, his father should have remembered that about him.
"My apologies," Ruadhan replied, thumping himself on the side of the head, and the music swelled and shifted again, dropping them briefly in a familiar dark stone room lit by a hundred candles.
He stopped breathing, and beside him he heard his father do the same, half-inhale cut off by recognition.
The tapers clustered at the altar nearly the length of the nave away, beneath a stained glass window made silver and shades of gray by moonlight outside. He heard someone else take a slow breath, then a swell of nothing but silence hit, the cathedral coming apart at the seams.
They found themselves in a plain, work-battered kitchen, empty of people. Knife-carved hexes lined the join between wall and ceiling, and his father reached up to touch one, breathing in as a corner of his mouth turned up in some sort of recognition.
"Here?" his father asked, looking down from the carvings at him, something oddly soft in his face.
"Here," he replied, sitting down in a chair with its back to a wall.
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It took a few moment of panting in the dark for him to start thinking again, reach back to shut the water off and flex his shoulders to see if water had worn through skin. Standing up, he had to grab for the curve of the rod and the wall to keep himself from falling down again, hissed through his teeth as blood rushed down the inside of his legs as water rushed down the cloth around them.
He found his shirt when he stepped out of the shower. It wicked up a fair amount of water before he realised what the crumpled mass of fabric under his foot was, and he contemplated it for a moment, dripping and beginning to shiver in the cooler air, his head pounding in time with his pulse, then gave up. Stripped off the remains of his soaking clothing, half-heartedly wrung them out over the drain and then flung everything--pants, shirt, underwear and the sock he could find without effort--over the rod that held up the water shield to dry.
Wrapped in the thin blanket he'd meant to use for a towel, itself damp from long hours next to a running shower, he made his way to the kitchen. The sun shining off the glass of the kitchen windows made him hiss again in different pain as he crossed the room, then stuck his head in the icebox until his ears went numb. Better dark and cold than too hot and trying to keep his eyes closed against the light.
He'd lost feeling completely in his ears by the time his brain started waking up again, and he reached up to break off a large piece of the thick ice lining the box. Eyes firmly closed and navigating entirely by memory, he stuck the shard in the bag the dragon-faced woman had used for the root vegetables, and held it against his head, fabric bunched up so he didn't freeze his fingers. His wet hair crackled slightly when he set the bag against it, which would have been slightly amusing if he'd been in a better mood.
The calluses on his hands and feet had actually gone soft from the water, he noticed when he sat down at the chair facing away from the window and took mental stock, as much as he could around the headache.
It was morning, according to the sun outside the windows--he reached automatically for curses and came up distressingly blank before returning to the list--and while he might have misplaced a day in the middle, he didn't really think he had. His skin looked like one giant dried fruit, skin wrinkled and puckered from the water, not bloated, and he hadn't fouled his clothing.
The sun chose that moment to glance off the window and reflect off a metal cabinet pull, bright enough to feel like a stick in his eye, and he cursed, jerking a hand up to block the reflection and dislodging the ice from his head.
" . . . Fuck this," he muttered as he rose, left the icepack on the table and stalked over towards the window, blanket trailing from one hand.
There was a drape-rod over the windows, curling elegant winter-bare branch to match the bars across the outside of the glass. It was also far enough out from the wall it was bolted to that he could fling the blanket over the rod, yank down on the short end to keep it there, and instantly darken the room to toffee and chocolate instead of white and gold. The blanket was streaked with the water it'd picked up from his skin, abstract darker patterns on the fabric, but he didn't care.
He thought about sitting down again, naked against the wooden chairs, then turned away.
The bedroom was blessedly twilit, dusty drapes from other inhabitants pulled full across the unseen window frame. He only bothered to half dress, pulling clothing from the rucksack he hadn't gotten around to completely unpacking what-he-thought-was-yesterday and flinging the extras on the floor instead of the bed. The trousers were too long, and he rolled them up to keep from stumbling, not trusting shaking hands to handle a knife bloodlessly.
He came back to the kitchen on slightly shaky feet, sat down again, put his head back down on the puddle of melting ice, hands pressing on the back of his head like the pressure might help keep his brains inside. The cold dulled the pain some, enough that he could stop thinking for at least a little while.
His stomach grumbled eventually, loudly enough to set his head throbbing again. The ice was near-melted anyway, so he rose, wrung out the sack over the sink, laid it out to dry a bit before he put another piece of ice in.
One of the earthenware pots contained blocks of soft cheese, which he spread thick on a slice of bread to eat while going through the rest of the supplies, looking for other easy things to eat. While he had found a dish-scrubber in the drawer nearest the sink, he didn't relish the idea of needing to use it, high grating noise on his still aching ears.
Honey, then, and more cheese, the only thing dirtied his longer knife and the counter he was cutting bread on. He accidentally cracked the jar of honey when he broke the wax seal, hand gripping a little too tight, and after a second of dumb staring he gave up and ate the whole thing on the rest of the loaf of bread.
'If I come back and find you laughing,' he thought as clearly as he could, holding an image of a long coat and guitar case in his head, mouth full of the bread's heel and sticky-sweet wildflower honey, 'I'm hitting you again.'
He probably imagined the smile. Ignored it in any event, resealing the cheese and setting it in the warmer section of the icebox to keep.
Considered the kitchen for a long moment, then went back to the bedroom, flopped down on top of the covers, folded his arms across his stomach, and reached out again.
Reaching bought him the roof of the Keep itself, this time, something kin to a coming storm carrying the music around in gusts and flurries of sound. He was alone, at least for a little while, the doors he could see from where he stood barred with rust-red iron thrust through the hinges. Not enough to keep out a really determined Sabaey, but since this was his own head and his own images he'd have no ghostly company.
"Not here," his father said from behind him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Turned to face his father, who'd apparently dropped out of the music and the air, the edges of his coat tattered and waving in the wind.
"Why not here?" he asked, half inclined to ignore whatever reply his father gave--he liked the top of the Keep. In the privacy of his own head, he could let his own likes and preferences rule.
"They found your aunt Joveta there--" his father nodded to a section of stone by one of the edging walls, the music in the wind briefly flinging up a flurry of woodwinds and a lone trumpet, then lifting into brass and a snare drum as he turned and gestured to another piece of stone "--my son Logan there." The music faded entirely for a long moment, leaving just the echo of wind over rock. "I don't think I could concentrate here."
He had to nod, acknowledging, and on his next in-taken breath they were somewhere else.
Blinked as moving shapes registered, then he was moving, cutting beneath a faceless, blurry woman carrying a tray to put his back to a wall, heart hammering in his chest. By the time he could slow his heart down, his father had risen from a group of other blurred human-size shapes, brushing his hand in a near-farewell to an instrument case that wasn't the one on his back, continuing the motion to a bared, freckled shoulder that stood out oddly clear in the room.
It wasn't one of the Manannans' drinking spaces, down by the docks, nor one of the merchant fleets' bars, he thought, pulling at music that sounded like whispering, faraway voices. Someplace far away, perhaps, one of his father's long-ago haunts in the years between being banished and coming home.
" . . . not here, either," he said, after he let go, straightening up from a defensive hunch.
His father raised an inquiring eyebrow, one hand pressed to a solid wooden table.
"Not unless you want me to be concentrating on the movement around us, instead of what I hear," he clarified, smiling a little wry. Of all people, his father should have remembered that about him.
"My apologies," Ruadhan replied, thumping himself on the side of the head, and the music swelled and shifted again, dropping them briefly in a familiar dark stone room lit by a hundred candles.
He stopped breathing, and beside him he heard his father do the same, half-inhale cut off by recognition.
The tapers clustered at the altar nearly the length of the nave away, beneath a stained glass window made silver and shades of gray by moonlight outside. He heard someone else take a slow breath, then a swell of nothing but silence hit, the cathedral coming apart at the seams.
They found themselves in a plain, work-battered kitchen, empty of people. Knife-carved hexes lined the join between wall and ceiling, and his father reached up to touch one, breathing in as a corner of his mouth turned up in some sort of recognition.
"Here?" his father asked, looking down from the carvings at him, something oddly soft in his face.
"Here," he replied, sitting down in a chair with its back to a wall.