15th Ymiden 718
Clink.
The sound of glass against glass pinged through the otherwise quiet atmosphere. Someone was having fun. Someone who was, most definitely and certainly not, Doran K. Cooney. The velvet drapes that hanged from the walls like so many lolling tongues seemed wet with the condensation of his sweat - shared across the empty space and reflected in the odd manner drapes had of collecting light and wearing it as their own.
Clink. There were tables, all neatly decorated with simple, sheer white linens - only they weren’t linen but silk. Silks. And upon each was a small wicker basket, placed roguishly just southeast of center. They were filled - or rather had a couple objects neatly placed so that they appeared filled - with bread that was shaped like hearts, both caricatures and the more anatomically correct. Those that resembled true hearts were all made out of rye, and none of the hearts were bigger than a shoe.
Clink. Around the tables were chairs, and in the chairs were people. They all wore masks - or maybe that was just what their faces looked like - and when they moved their mouths, no voice slipped out, just empty, quiet silence. The only true sounds were the occasional scuffing of the chairs’ feet along the worn wooden floors and the insufferable-
Clink.
Doran K. Cooney wasn’t a rich man. He wasn’t a poor man either, but his money made little difference. He was stuck, lost in the invisible maze of social awkwardness. How did one have a conversation without sound? Without words? Was he supposed to speak, and if he did, would anyone speak back, raise their voice and out themselves as one of noise and not empty, quiet silence?
If there were such a person or persons, he couldn’t know. He was just a man. A simple man. But he was a man who had a voice, and so the moment the god damned clink sounded and the people all silently shifted, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind as she sat down across from him.
“They say a hunter is a hunter, even in a dream.”
If he had expected her to spent the next bit staring in confusion before the Clink took them both away from each other forever, he was going to be very disappointment.
“Don’t be shy,” she said with a small, knowing smile. “The nightmare swirls and churns unending.”
She was a stunner; tall, fit, brown hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. Beautiful blue eyes stared at him from beneath her mask, a hideous caricature of a giant reindeer-dog thing that did little to hide the fact that she must have been something to look at under the facade. She smiled - he couldn’t see it- but she smiled, and extended a limp, graceful hand.
For him to kiss?
Without hesitation, he snatched up one of the bread hearts - rye, the darkest - and quickly shoved it up into the woman’s downturned palm, carefully wrapping her fingers over the hard crust of the fourth ventricle. “I’ve never actually eaten bread before.”
She accepted the bread with surprising firmness. “As well you shouldn’t,” she said, her gesture robbing the awkwardness from his own. “Not much in the way of health for the body. Fiona, by the way.” she said, shaking the bread as if it were his own hand. “I’m acquainted with this loaf, but who might you be?”
Muddy green eyes sparkled with a quiet admiration - not only was the reindeer-dog woman of a kind of blatantly mysterious beauty, but she was health-conscious as well. “Fiona. Not who I am but an echo of who you are; I’m not certain I could name a single one of them,” His eyes took on a brief flicker of shiftiness as he chanced a glanced at their silent peers. “But as for myself?”
He tipped his hat, and what a hat it was: tall, maybe one his own head then half again; of a black velveteen; a pale blue ribbon wrapped round; and below it a mask that was something like a teethed baby, only rootlike and warped with the eyes mismatched and uneven. He was a plain sort of man, but his mask hid his plainness behind status quo of peculiar that was donned by all others of his gender and besides. Where Fiona’s beauty was poorly hidden, his plainness was made all the more exotic.
“I’m Doran. Doran K. Cooney, though don’t ask me what the ‘k’ stands for, I’m not keen to the details myself.” He tapped the table with one of his fingers, while the hand he’d used to place the bread in hers moved in time with her shake though there was space enough between them that a ham might have been placed there and neither would have felt the difference.
The Clink didn’t come. The Clink always came on time, but it didn’t come this time.
“I think it stands for Keene,” Fiona said, standing up and reaching up to place the loaf of bread onto the tippy top of his top hat. “How you end up here, hunter?”
“Is that-”
Clink, came the sound. But nobody else heard it. Was it only in his mind?
He glanced around, not a body moving as they should have, and when he set his eyes upon Fiona once more, his smile had become a soft, curved line, like that of a distant hill against the pale blue backdrop of a summer’s midday sky. “Keene, you say. These small creatures - they must have crawled out of a nightmare somewhere - all whispered such a name to me before-”
Before what? He couldn’t recall, and he didn’t really want to. Instead, he stood slowly to his feet, only to plummet back into his chair, plucking the loaf that lingered above out of the air with a single, swift motion. Pinching it between his fingers so that the aorta faced Fiona, he casually used it to poke the empty space between them. “I think they brought me here, those little wrinkled men.”
But the Clink- but Fiona.
“But Fiona,” Fiona said. Her blue eyes seemed to narrow behind that mask. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. The very bedrock of comprehension that rests upon my shoulders is something you cannot bear. I say ‘wrinkled men’ but in the back of my mind where the fears grow strong, I veil their true name.”
“Mensis.” He whispered, terror widening his eyes and bread slipping from his fingers to settle onto the pristine silk of the table, crumbs bouncing every which way like the whorish cousin of a glitter’s third bastard child.
“Mensis,” she echoed. She spared the crumbs a quick, irritated glance, but returned her eyes to his quickly enough. “The Healing Church, The Choir, the Workshop - names, names, names, names that should have been buried back in the hamlet.” She tapped each name on the table one by one. “They say this is a date. I say it’s an interview.”
“Interview... or interrogation?” Fear wasn’t the right word for the tone in his voice - interest, perhaps? “Is there something I could know that you don’t already?” His frown had reversed, a curious curve complimenting the sudden sheen in his eyes, shaded as they were by his mask. “Let us sit about and speak feverishly.”
Was there the Clink then? He couldn’t be certain - already the quiet sounds of blinking filled his brain.
She raised her head up, pushed up mask over her head to reveal her shapely, too-perfect mouth, and opened her mouth. Clink, Clink, Clink, Clink, a perfect replica of the sound in his head issued from her throat. She never once moved her mouth to make the actual sound.
“Eyes in the sky, born without a child…” she whispered reverently. Her head turned fully to the ceiling. “Bos, some say Bosom, grant us eyes, yes, grant us the eyes on our brains…”
He blinked.
Then she returned to her prior position: mask on proper, sitting right and facing him, nary a hint that anything had happened between Doran’s question and her response.
“There could be.” she said. “In the blood fever is the way of the world, and in the world lies a slug with wings. When you approach her altar, she will sell you a pumpkin. Don’t.” She leaned in close, and Doran did the same, their mask-noses barely touching. Some great secret was about to be revealed.
“It’s overpriced.”
Gently, he placed the tip of a single finger - it didn’t matter which one - against the smooth skin of the bottom of her chin. “So you know her.” For a moment, his eyes stared calm - pools of serene, turbid moss - before the finger slid farther, farther, farther, until it was pressed with a delicate pressure against the soft, supple divot between her throat and chest. “Here we sit, posteriors rooted to the wood of our chairs, but the bosom might be very close to us, merely here below my hand?”
Clink.
The sound of glass against glass pinged through the otherwise quiet atmosphere. Someone was having fun. Someone who was, most definitely and certainly not, Doran K. Cooney. The velvet drapes that hanged from the walls like so many lolling tongues seemed wet with the condensation of his sweat - shared across the empty space and reflected in the odd manner drapes had of collecting light and wearing it as their own.
Clink. There were tables, all neatly decorated with simple, sheer white linens - only they weren’t linen but silk. Silks. And upon each was a small wicker basket, placed roguishly just southeast of center. They were filled - or rather had a couple objects neatly placed so that they appeared filled - with bread that was shaped like hearts, both caricatures and the more anatomically correct. Those that resembled true hearts were all made out of rye, and none of the hearts were bigger than a shoe.
Clink. Around the tables were chairs, and in the chairs were people. They all wore masks - or maybe that was just what their faces looked like - and when they moved their mouths, no voice slipped out, just empty, quiet silence. The only true sounds were the occasional scuffing of the chairs’ feet along the worn wooden floors and the insufferable-
Clink.
Doran K. Cooney wasn’t a rich man. He wasn’t a poor man either, but his money made little difference. He was stuck, lost in the invisible maze of social awkwardness. How did one have a conversation without sound? Without words? Was he supposed to speak, and if he did, would anyone speak back, raise their voice and out themselves as one of noise and not empty, quiet silence?
If there were such a person or persons, he couldn’t know. He was just a man. A simple man. But he was a man who had a voice, and so the moment the god damned clink sounded and the people all silently shifted, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind as she sat down across from him.
“They say a hunter is a hunter, even in a dream.”
If he had expected her to spent the next bit staring in confusion before the Clink took them both away from each other forever, he was going to be very disappointment.
“Don’t be shy,” she said with a small, knowing smile. “The nightmare swirls and churns unending.”
She was a stunner; tall, fit, brown hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. Beautiful blue eyes stared at him from beneath her mask, a hideous caricature of a giant reindeer-dog thing that did little to hide the fact that she must have been something to look at under the facade. She smiled - he couldn’t see it- but she smiled, and extended a limp, graceful hand.
For him to kiss?
Without hesitation, he snatched up one of the bread hearts - rye, the darkest - and quickly shoved it up into the woman’s downturned palm, carefully wrapping her fingers over the hard crust of the fourth ventricle. “I’ve never actually eaten bread before.”
She accepted the bread with surprising firmness. “As well you shouldn’t,” she said, her gesture robbing the awkwardness from his own. “Not much in the way of health for the body. Fiona, by the way.” she said, shaking the bread as if it were his own hand. “I’m acquainted with this loaf, but who might you be?”
Muddy green eyes sparkled with a quiet admiration - not only was the reindeer-dog woman of a kind of blatantly mysterious beauty, but she was health-conscious as well. “Fiona. Not who I am but an echo of who you are; I’m not certain I could name a single one of them,” His eyes took on a brief flicker of shiftiness as he chanced a glanced at their silent peers. “But as for myself?”
He tipped his hat, and what a hat it was: tall, maybe one his own head then half again; of a black velveteen; a pale blue ribbon wrapped round; and below it a mask that was something like a teethed baby, only rootlike and warped with the eyes mismatched and uneven. He was a plain sort of man, but his mask hid his plainness behind status quo of peculiar that was donned by all others of his gender and besides. Where Fiona’s beauty was poorly hidden, his plainness was made all the more exotic.
“I’m Doran. Doran K. Cooney, though don’t ask me what the ‘k’ stands for, I’m not keen to the details myself.” He tapped the table with one of his fingers, while the hand he’d used to place the bread in hers moved in time with her shake though there was space enough between them that a ham might have been placed there and neither would have felt the difference.
The Clink didn’t come. The Clink always came on time, but it didn’t come this time.
“I think it stands for Keene,” Fiona said, standing up and reaching up to place the loaf of bread onto the tippy top of his top hat. “How you end up here, hunter?”
“Is that-”
Clink, came the sound. But nobody else heard it. Was it only in his mind?
He glanced around, not a body moving as they should have, and when he set his eyes upon Fiona once more, his smile had become a soft, curved line, like that of a distant hill against the pale blue backdrop of a summer’s midday sky. “Keene, you say. These small creatures - they must have crawled out of a nightmare somewhere - all whispered such a name to me before-”
Before what? He couldn’t recall, and he didn’t really want to. Instead, he stood slowly to his feet, only to plummet back into his chair, plucking the loaf that lingered above out of the air with a single, swift motion. Pinching it between his fingers so that the aorta faced Fiona, he casually used it to poke the empty space between them. “I think they brought me here, those little wrinkled men.”
But the Clink- but Fiona.
“But Fiona,” Fiona said. Her blue eyes seemed to narrow behind that mask. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. The very bedrock of comprehension that rests upon my shoulders is something you cannot bear. I say ‘wrinkled men’ but in the back of my mind where the fears grow strong, I veil their true name.”
“Mensis.” He whispered, terror widening his eyes and bread slipping from his fingers to settle onto the pristine silk of the table, crumbs bouncing every which way like the whorish cousin of a glitter’s third bastard child.
“Mensis,” she echoed. She spared the crumbs a quick, irritated glance, but returned her eyes to his quickly enough. “The Healing Church, The Choir, the Workshop - names, names, names, names that should have been buried back in the hamlet.” She tapped each name on the table one by one. “They say this is a date. I say it’s an interview.”
“Interview... or interrogation?” Fear wasn’t the right word for the tone in his voice - interest, perhaps? “Is there something I could know that you don’t already?” His frown had reversed, a curious curve complimenting the sudden sheen in his eyes, shaded as they were by his mask. “Let us sit about and speak feverishly.”
Was there the Clink then? He couldn’t be certain - already the quiet sounds of blinking filled his brain.
She raised her head up, pushed up mask over her head to reveal her shapely, too-perfect mouth, and opened her mouth. Clink, Clink, Clink, Clink, a perfect replica of the sound in his head issued from her throat. She never once moved her mouth to make the actual sound.
“Eyes in the sky, born without a child…” she whispered reverently. Her head turned fully to the ceiling. “Bos, some say Bosom, grant us eyes, yes, grant us the eyes on our brains…”
He blinked.
Then she returned to her prior position: mask on proper, sitting right and facing him, nary a hint that anything had happened between Doran’s question and her response.
“There could be.” she said. “In the blood fever is the way of the world, and in the world lies a slug with wings. When you approach her altar, she will sell you a pumpkin. Don’t.” She leaned in close, and Doran did the same, their mask-noses barely touching. Some great secret was about to be revealed.
“It’s overpriced.”
Gently, he placed the tip of a single finger - it didn’t matter which one - against the smooth skin of the bottom of her chin. “So you know her.” For a moment, his eyes stared calm - pools of serene, turbid moss - before the finger slid farther, farther, farther, until it was pressed with a delicate pressure against the soft, supple divot between her throat and chest. “Here we sit, posteriors rooted to the wood of our chairs, but the bosom might be very close to us, merely here below my hand?”
