The Partners We Have

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Look to Windward
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2017 9:38 am

The Partners We Have

Post by Look to Windward » Wed Apr 18, 2018 12:22 am

Pity was poison.

She was pathetically glad when she saw him shouldering his way through the early morning leavings that spotted the tavern floor. Hunched gamblers and drunks; the triumphant and the defeated united in defiance of the encroaching dawn, and the creeping realisation of another night lost to memory as surely as it was lost to purpose. Father knew she had spent enough evenings staring at the splintered timber to know the sensation, her eyes held low enough to avoid catching sight of her wretched reflection on the bronze taps.

Last night; despite all her promises the previous morning, had been no improvement on the pattern.

An orcblood had screamed for service and broken a chair. Some odious little weasel of a man had made eavesdropping on every conversation within earshot his favourite pastime, and thought himself clever when he offered commentary a child of three seasons might have dreamed up. A worm smiling for the warmth of its own excrement. She had made her excuses and abandoned her erstwhile companions to the orcblood's ramblings. A daughter of Corellon; among the leavings. Was it so great a wonder that she strove to forget it? Was she not entitled to that much? She tapped her hand against the long-empty cup; her gloves so stained they might as well have been made of the same blotted brown timber as the cup.

Entitled? Likely not, but the world was so rarely about what she deserved. A fact for which she supposed she ought have been grateful. She deserved a noose more than the unfortunate she'd witnessed hanging on the dockside earlier that evening, certainly. A nothing crime committed by no-one in particular. Come this time tomorrow only the crows would remember it. Still. It was difficult to feel too much gratitude with the dull taste of her own vomit lingering in the back of her throat like a guest long past welcome. She coughed, retched, but her stomach was long since empty. It had a distressing amount in common with her purse, in that regard.

"Hullo, Morren." She whispered the words. The newcomer, carefully picking his path around the ruined stool, did not hear her. Did not look at her. That was little enough surprise. With each passing seasons she found she had to try a little harder to be noticed and, of late, it was beginning to seem altogether too much effort.

She was glad to see him, all the same. A little lankier than the full-blooded humans that surrounded him. A little lighter on his feet. A hardness of the face; a lightness of laughter. Things she had not realised she missed until she saw them anew. It was unfair; how a little company only left her missing it all the more.

Another of the blood. A diminished quantity of it; certainly. Some trifling matters of human ancestry. A decade ago, she'd have walked passed him with scarce a sneer. But, of late, he'd offered the closest thing she had to conversation.

She found that meant more to her then it should have.

She planted a hand on her stool, and made to rise to greet him. Her limbs betrayed her. Too slow, too sluggish. A low hiss of defeat, and she slumped back on to the stool, her eyes half-closed. Not reverie, but something vaguely like it, pleasant and soft and, far sweeter still, something entirely separate from the Nomad and its groaning patrons.

Tomorrow, then.
It's crooked, but it's the only game in town.

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