NaNoWriMo 2008: Day 10
-=The House of Key, Part I Cont.=-
-Much to the disdain of their daughter (their son never said a word on the matter), insisted on dressing their children in only the finest, most fashionable of clothing, and ushering them through the small throngs of attendees. At this time, the children would be urged to smile, shake hands, curtsy, and any other sort of polite actions in the way of greetings, so long as it was appropriate to the code and conduct of whom so ever they happened to be greeting at the time.
But the children were not allowed to talk. Not once, not ever. Not so long as they were fancifully prancing their ways around the company their parents held.
After all, the Parties Dinner was never meant for children.
In history, since the oldest memory of all that was, there has always been a time when adults will gather to talk and dance and silently judge each other. It is an age old thing born from status and pedigree. Children do not take part in this ritual, because children do not (or at least, should not) understand the game.
This particular game, the Parties Dinner, was formed when the very first member of the very first family of the House of Key decided that through his prestige he would gather about him on a regular basis all other families of note. This was both to preserve a social commonality among the higher families, and to arrange that there might be a constant link between them all, for purposes of holding council, organizing suitable marriage arrangements, and maintaining a support system that would ensure the proper succession of all families worthy to be continued. (Any families found unworthy of a continuance were left on the wayside of society, and they would fall to ruin. This had happened a total of three times already, in Florian's generation alone, and it served as a brilliant reminder of how very dependent on one another the higher class families really were.)
It was all a lot of snobbery and rubbish, really. A gathering held once every week for the purpose of updating one's gossip, and flaunting one's wealth.
A popularity contest.
Long before, children were not even allowed on the same floor as these dinner gatherings, and they were left excluded until the age of seventeen. Before that age, it used to be that children were hardly even thought of as people.
Now the days are more modern, and children on occasion, if their family has proven that they're proper enough to break the rules a little, are brought to the dinners in the House of Key. Most always, the only children there are those of Florian and Vignette. (And of course, who could tell them to do otherwise? They were, after all, of the House. It was their own distant, distant relatives that had set these rules in the first place, so of course it could be they that broke them.)
Occasionally, though, there would be other children present. On these nights, Baroque and Islinne would actually wait with patience while their nannies dressed them, and instead of running to their cellar, they would attend the dinner.
Baroque complied on these nights because other the children somewhat astounded him. For the longest time he had been convinced that the only other person event remotely small as he was his sister. (And even she was always tall in comparison.) This was the only thing he could have perceived, naturally, having grown up in a house where no other children than he and his sibling resided. But when he was old enough, finally, to have been shown to the other families (when he turned five, actually), he made a discovery that had shocked him;
Other people were children, too.
From then on, when he knew of any children that would be attending the Parties Dinner, he very calmly forced himself to accept his formal clothing, and even smiled while his mother held his hand and introduced him to her new favorite families.
Islinne attended the parties when other children came, mainly because of a boy named Lavish. He had apparently adored her from first sight, and she soon learned that he would do just about anything she asked of him. Now, he was only a lesser cousin to the son of one of these prestigious families, but they had raised him in their household, and so he was thought of as a sort of second child. This was why he was brought, on occasion, to the House.
Islinne couldn't care less about that aspect of him. Normally if someone wasn't born of a higher class, she wouldn't be bothered to give them the time of day (as she was raised to do). But she would speak to Lavish, because she thought of him more like a lapdog than a person, and the idea of an unquestioningly loyal servant pleased her ridiculously spoiled child's mind.
Other times, though, when there were other children at the dinners, but Lavish was not present, Islinne only went because her brother went. She did not let her brother go anywhere without her, regardless of who else was with him.
~~
-=Chad and His Carousel, Part IV=-
Not entirely sure what to do with himself, Chad finished his shift at work as normal. He didn't tell Mr. Stutton about his hearing. He couldn't really find a point in it. Mr. Stutton already knew that he had been hard of hearing before, due to his work area and his music habits, so losing his hearing entirely didn't really seem to have been any sort of reason to talk to the boss, and ask off for work, or whatever it was he had been thinking of doing. It wasn't as though Mr. Stutton could do anything about it anyway. The man had fully understood those particular health hazards that came with working inside the carousel, and, being a fairly rich fellow, he had kindly given all his carousel employees the very best sort of health insurance. It was Chad's own fault that he had never gone to a doctor about his hearing.
So he didn't bother Mr. Stutton about it. He did his job like usual, went home like usual, and, like usual, got stoned so he wouldn't have to deal with it.
Hey, it worked for everything else, so why not this?
But later, when the thick grey smoke was done winding it's way around in his lungs, and the deep green tendrils were done winding their way around in his brain, Chad knew he'd still been weirdly unsettled but his new situation.
He had expected he'd lose his hearing, sure. He'd calmly accepted the idea as a fact of life. But he hadn't expected it to have been so soon.
At home, Chad lay on his bed, and took a hit off the joint he held, and watched the smoke climb to the ceiling.
Amused, he thought about how how every misfortune in life was accompanied by the very same questions he was asking right now:
Did it have to happen so soon? Why me? What's the point of having been able to hear in the first place? And etcetera.
And regardless of what the misfortune happened to be, and no matter how many times people would tell themselves that it was bound to happen sometime, it was always dealt with by pitching a fit, and assuming the entire world was out to get them.
So much for preparedness.
Chad took another hit, and tried to think of better things.
~~
-=Baroque Alone, Part IV=-
Baroque's breath was heavy. He couldn't seem to catch it, no matter how much his lungs labored, no matter how much he gasped. But he didn't stop running. Even when a stitch formed in his side and made him feel like he would simply collapse, he forced himself to keep going.
Run, he told himself. Run. It's only to the edge of the garden, and then just the gate after that...Run.
But the gardens were vast and sprawling, and possibly went on forever, for all he knew. And Baroque had always been a frail boy, who never really had it in him to exert any kind of physical strength, and was never really required to, besides. And what if there was no gate past the gardens...?
But he couldn't stop now. He had already gone too far, already done too much. Things were set into motion, and it was done so by his own hand, through his own plotting.
No. He couldn't stop now.
And in the bag he'd slung over his shoulder, ninety nine heavy keys tried to drag him down, tried to betray him with their clamoring, bell-like voices while they clashed and jumbled together.
~~
-=Facts, Part VII=-
Responsibilities, like doors, are often very tricky creatures. When one is small, one thinks that to have responsibilities means to be as self assured and wonderful as all adults are. When one is small, one tries to grow up faster, and wishes for grown up things, and insists that they are perfectly capable of dealing with such things as responsibility. At the same time, they know nothing of the true nature of being an adult. No child possibly could. If they did they would no longer be a child, you see.
Adults only happen when a child and life get together and start playing around with dangerous material such as pets, jobs, boyfriends, a funeral...
something happens, and the child grows up just a little. Piece by piece. Inch by inch. Disaster by disaster. (But don't be confused here. Not all disasters are particularly bad, when it comes to growing up. Sometimes something brilliant and wonderful happens, and everyone involved is jubilant, and when it's over, all that's left is a child or two having grown up just a little more, and the disastrous mess that's left over. It's sort of like parties, really, sometimes.)
then one day, a person might look back over their shoulder and see what their life once was when they were small. And then they realize that they're no longer as small as when things first began, and they've got far too many of the responsibilities they once wanted so badly. In fact, when they look forward again, all of the rest of their life seems filled with nothing but more and more and more things to be responsible for, and all the person can really want is to go back to being responsible for nothing.
But they can't be small again, and they wouldn't really appreciate it even if they could.
After all, being small is no more fun than growing up, because there are hardships no matter when you are.
The only thing to do, then, is appreciate what you've got (or not got, sometimes) while you've got it, (or not got it, accordingly). And if that doesn't work, then the only other answer is to stop looking backwards so very often.
~~
-=The House Of Key=-
There were ten families, each to make one of the ten Parties, which would gather once on every third night of each week. There had not always been ten. Sometimes there were more than that. Sometimes there were less. But for now, and only now, there were ten, and all the others were unimportant (or so everyone had deemed.)
At the top of all the others stood the family of the House of Key, and the others, in order of favorites, were as follows:
First was the family of Turned Halls, who had seven different heirs, and far, far too many obscurely related relatives.
Second came a sweet, elderly couple. The husband was originally from Thames Under, and his wife hailed from A Wall That Apparently Turned Out To Be The Missing End Of Tuesday. (For simplicity's sake, whenever she referred to her hometown, she always called it by the nickname “Missing End.” It was a much appreciated gesture by many.) The couple had no children, and therefore no heirs, so they took their time in getting old and dying.
Third was a widow who had two sons, but needed a daughter to succeed her house. She lived in Between, once, and had done a great deal to work herself up from her commoner's stature. Now she lived in Just Beneath Upper, and was doing very well for herself, (when one excluded that she was floundering for the chance to have a daughter).
Fourth, and possibly the most unremarkable (but still quite high on the list. Anybody's guess as to why...), was the family of Further. They were not so wealthy as others, but were blessed with a great amount of charm and wit. In their house they had one son (Janus), and a nephew (Lavish), and that was all.
Fifth, the Lady of Ganymede Subways, who really had nothing remarkable of note about her. She was still quite young, after all, and hadn't even taken a husband yet.
Sixth was Danberr from Marten's Harrower. He was an absurd sort of man, and everyone felt a fondness for him that they couldn't quite avoid.
Seventh, the twins who lived in Nearest, But Hard To Reach. No one knew too very much about them, except for where they were from, that they were indeed, genuine identical twins, and that their names were Avatrol and Legitimate.
The eighth family lived in Beside Proper Doorknobs, and were old as stones. Or at least their bloodline was. For a person to actually be old as stones would be a very unfortunate predicament indeed, and they were grateful that it was only their heritage that had been landed in such a situation.
Lastly the ninth family, who were, socially standing, very nearly as prominent as those from the House of Key. But they were a disturbingly cruel sort of people by nature, and the only thing that maintained their place as one of the Parties was that their genealogy had very close tie-ins to that of Florian's. They came from Nadder, but often summered in Very Close By.
When the Parties gathered, many, many disastrous sort of conversations would happen, and all who attended the dinners would leave again with the faint feeling of having grown up just a little bit more.
~~
Skip to:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight
Day Nine
Day Ten - You are here
Day Eleven
Day Twelve
Day Thirteen
Day Fourteen
Day Fifteen
Day Seventeen
Day Ninteen
Day Twenty
Day Twenty-One
Day Twenty-Three
Day Twenty-Four
Day Twenty-Five
Day Twenty-Six
Day Twenty-Seven
NaNoWriMo 2009