Les Misérables
05-16-11, 11:27 PM
closed, recruitment coming soon.
After midnight the common room of the Last Night's Maiden was a good place to think. Chairs and stools stacked neatly on polished tables and bartops, nothing moved but the swelling flames in the hearth. As the dried kindling gave way and ignited the heavier rywan logs, fine grey smoke rolled up the chimney and soared through a clear spring night in Underwood. Stars and moon winked at one another amidst passing clouds, courting as playful as the town's teenage element. The trees shivered in a northern breeze that never blew from the same exact direction long.
In the common room, orange firelight bathed Phyr Sa'resh's wrinkled navy skin. The ancient drow sat still as the heartstone that made his seat. The fine brown woollen cloak with a secretive vlince lining, the one with the crest that marked him Captain of the Watch, hung from an upturned chair's legs like a scarecrow's pants. Phyr had the hemp-laced collar of his green cotton robe open, the sleeves rolled up to display his withered arm and scarcrossed stump. Sweat and moisture from the kettle humidifier over the fire shone on his dark, leathery face. Rosewater. Elena's touch had added a soothing aroma to his clever contraption.
In Devil's Keep, the Salvic Prison that had kept him chained for thirty years, Phyr had forgotten pleasant smells. He remembered the first time he'd smelled flowers, or a woman, or even fresh air. The one armed drow's azure eyes closed wistfully. When Elena held him, the smell of her skin her downy hair on his neck, was enough to loosen Phyr's grasp on reality. He turned his head slowly, but still his neck popped louder than the writhing fire. On the table beside his drooping cloak, a clear bottle gleamed with amber liquid. The world had worked so hard to kill him for so long, he'd lost an arm and clung to sanity like a weasel with a snake. How now could life be so well? How could she love him?
He'd asked her in that very room. The previous night, as she swept and mopped and he poured over ledgers of recruitments and payments and every other sort of record. She'd dropped the broom and come to him, linen apron swishing about her willowy frame, and seized him by the collar with both hands. "I never wanted more than to earn a living and bear babes from a respectable man," she'd whispered so fiercely he forgot the aching closeness of her lips, "just meeting you taught me I can do more, Phyr Sa'resh. And as long as you need me I'll care for you as best I can. Don' feel you don't deserve it jus a'cuz you missed out for so long." She'd kissed him then, and his numb fingers had scattered the reports and scrolls of parchment to the floor.
Elena's words were his anchor. So long as her voice stayed fresh in his mind, he knew he wasn't fading to age. The fire crackled and danced in the whisky bottle's honey-hued reflection.
The front door, built of stout oak and locked and deadbolted, opened suddenly. It slammed shut, and before the ensuing gust of night air caressed Phyr's face, Joshua Cronen sat next to him. The hazel eyes of the Ascended looked into Phyr's soul, somehow seeming a hundred years older than Sa'resh himself. The man looked young enough, with his light brown hair and chiselled features. His skin bore scars but not pockmarks. The aura of eternal youth.
"The prisoner is locked down by the river," Cronen said, "thought you should know." The Ascended spoike rapidly with clipped crisp words and rose almost as soon as he sat down.
"Josh." Phyr raised his left hand, withered fingers splayed. A plaintive gesture from a shadow of an elf. Cronen waited.
What had Elena said about the bottle? It was one of her least favourite topics of conversation, and she always started with questions. "How many drinks today Phyr? How many glasses? Bottles? Do you even pay attention?" But there was never any malice in her voice. She understood, and the first night he'd had the strength to cork a flask of Yurik's before coming to bed, she'd wept tears of joy. "If you can't control it yourself, only drink in company. I don't see any other way around it." She'd taken to repeating the phrase often.
Cronen read Phyr's hesitation, as he usually could, and picked up the bottle.
"Yurik's Firewhisky..." he read the label in a musing voice, a smile tugging at his cheeks so the Y-shaped scar beneath his eye stretched. "Too long since we shared a few fingers of this scotch, Sa'resh." Cronen's metal-booted footsteps were quieter than the clinking of glasses he retrieved from the bar. Phyr closed his eyes and raised his chin, eliciting another pop from deep within his sternum. The sloop of glass tumblers filling with whisky reached his mangled, pointed ears, and the aged scotch's aroma blended with the woodsmoke and rosewater.
Phyr smiled. "Drink with me, my lord." He said as he accepted a glass.
"Don't call me that." The strange toast hung amidst the rafters as the two friends drank to their recent victory.
After midnight the common room of the Last Night's Maiden was a good place to think. Chairs and stools stacked neatly on polished tables and bartops, nothing moved but the swelling flames in the hearth. As the dried kindling gave way and ignited the heavier rywan logs, fine grey smoke rolled up the chimney and soared through a clear spring night in Underwood. Stars and moon winked at one another amidst passing clouds, courting as playful as the town's teenage element. The trees shivered in a northern breeze that never blew from the same exact direction long.
In the common room, orange firelight bathed Phyr Sa'resh's wrinkled navy skin. The ancient drow sat still as the heartstone that made his seat. The fine brown woollen cloak with a secretive vlince lining, the one with the crest that marked him Captain of the Watch, hung from an upturned chair's legs like a scarecrow's pants. Phyr had the hemp-laced collar of his green cotton robe open, the sleeves rolled up to display his withered arm and scarcrossed stump. Sweat and moisture from the kettle humidifier over the fire shone on his dark, leathery face. Rosewater. Elena's touch had added a soothing aroma to his clever contraption.
In Devil's Keep, the Salvic Prison that had kept him chained for thirty years, Phyr had forgotten pleasant smells. He remembered the first time he'd smelled flowers, or a woman, or even fresh air. The one armed drow's azure eyes closed wistfully. When Elena held him, the smell of her skin her downy hair on his neck, was enough to loosen Phyr's grasp on reality. He turned his head slowly, but still his neck popped louder than the writhing fire. On the table beside his drooping cloak, a clear bottle gleamed with amber liquid. The world had worked so hard to kill him for so long, he'd lost an arm and clung to sanity like a weasel with a snake. How now could life be so well? How could she love him?
He'd asked her in that very room. The previous night, as she swept and mopped and he poured over ledgers of recruitments and payments and every other sort of record. She'd dropped the broom and come to him, linen apron swishing about her willowy frame, and seized him by the collar with both hands. "I never wanted more than to earn a living and bear babes from a respectable man," she'd whispered so fiercely he forgot the aching closeness of her lips, "just meeting you taught me I can do more, Phyr Sa'resh. And as long as you need me I'll care for you as best I can. Don' feel you don't deserve it jus a'cuz you missed out for so long." She'd kissed him then, and his numb fingers had scattered the reports and scrolls of parchment to the floor.
Elena's words were his anchor. So long as her voice stayed fresh in his mind, he knew he wasn't fading to age. The fire crackled and danced in the whisky bottle's honey-hued reflection.
The front door, built of stout oak and locked and deadbolted, opened suddenly. It slammed shut, and before the ensuing gust of night air caressed Phyr's face, Joshua Cronen sat next to him. The hazel eyes of the Ascended looked into Phyr's soul, somehow seeming a hundred years older than Sa'resh himself. The man looked young enough, with his light brown hair and chiselled features. His skin bore scars but not pockmarks. The aura of eternal youth.
"The prisoner is locked down by the river," Cronen said, "thought you should know." The Ascended spoike rapidly with clipped crisp words and rose almost as soon as he sat down.
"Josh." Phyr raised his left hand, withered fingers splayed. A plaintive gesture from a shadow of an elf. Cronen waited.
What had Elena said about the bottle? It was one of her least favourite topics of conversation, and she always started with questions. "How many drinks today Phyr? How many glasses? Bottles? Do you even pay attention?" But there was never any malice in her voice. She understood, and the first night he'd had the strength to cork a flask of Yurik's before coming to bed, she'd wept tears of joy. "If you can't control it yourself, only drink in company. I don't see any other way around it." She'd taken to repeating the phrase often.
Cronen read Phyr's hesitation, as he usually could, and picked up the bottle.
"Yurik's Firewhisky..." he read the label in a musing voice, a smile tugging at his cheeks so the Y-shaped scar beneath his eye stretched. "Too long since we shared a few fingers of this scotch, Sa'resh." Cronen's metal-booted footsteps were quieter than the clinking of glasses he retrieved from the bar. Phyr closed his eyes and raised his chin, eliciting another pop from deep within his sternum. The sloop of glass tumblers filling with whisky reached his mangled, pointed ears, and the aged scotch's aroma blended with the woodsmoke and rosewater.
Phyr smiled. "Drink with me, my lord." He said as he accepted a glass.
"Don't call me that." The strange toast hung amidst the rafters as the two friends drank to their recent victory.