Little in Alonia (Open)

["Babs" Delton]

The bare plinth
Placed without a pillar
Just a landing
Some bricker's sanding
Silting the stone plane
Tracks time
A glittering direction
A projection in the bricker's eye
The blame

Laura lifted the nib of the pen from the scrap of paper and looked at the lines she left while a drop of ink slid onto the already-blackened tip of her wool glove. Her brow sank on her eyes and she sighed. Before the ink on the last line could dry, she plucked the scrap from the lacquered surface of her market stand and lifted it into the dwindling flame of the torch sticking out of the ground behind her. The scrap ignited and she dropped it into the snow gathered by the cold stool. With a tinge of exasperation in her breath she dropped her head down onto the table. One of the volumes' pages tickled her nose. Some deep breaths later, she felt certain of her frustration's departure and stood up.

The torch had only a small candle's flame left to show, too little to allow Laura's stand to be seen in the shadow of the tanner's half-timber shop and under the ever-present Alonia snowfall. She yanked the torch out of the ground and rested it against a new one, which started up in seconds. Laura dropped the spent torch on the snow, sending of a second of sizzling, and stabbed the new one in the old hole. One more new torch waited against the building. When that one was used, it would only be an hour before the city's curfew. Laura warmed her hands with the newly burning torch, briefly wishing for one of the magical torches offered in the market just around the corner. They burned for one-hundred hours instead of one, but one such torch cost a month's worth of Laura's sales. Instead, she went out into the forests close to Alonia and bunched up brush and pine resin on the tips of three branches every morning before coming back to setup her stand.

When her gloves felt close to burning, Laura lifted the canvas canopy for her stand from two of its posts and waved off the last hour of snow before securing it back on. Back on the stool, Laura smiled at passersby and held out a copy of the little volume. The cover read, Alonia's Soul: Volume X, in all three common languages. It was a monthly collection of commoners' writings that Laura edited and placed together. It was the only publication that represented the creative writings of the commoners. Since Laura, or Babs, as she had made herself known, was fluent in all three common languages, it was an opportunity for the commoners to build a canon that could transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries. In reality, however, Laura had a hard time selling much of the collections. Many commoners could not read, and those of higher classes had a tendency to ignore commoner art. Still, she made enough to survive, though not enough to get into the main market.

After a few tries to garner some attention from the thinning output of the nearby market, she rested, watching the torch's flames lick up against the falling snow from Alonia's mountain sky, imaging the flame as burning ribbon lapping up from an otherworldly wind. What did the torch look like from the tufts of snow floating down? She imagined herself balancing a flake, falling down into a unknown, warm light, only to find her footing melted away. She thought to herself that she thought to imagine something less horrifying. The bad poem left her mind, and she smiled to herself.

[Virgilia de Artio]

After hours of wandering around in the northern lands Virgilia had to admit to herself that she was very much lost. Being a mute made it hard to ask for the way, and not many did know how to read or had any paper available making it hard to write as well. But she was an optimistic girl and decided not to look at it as a problem, only as a way to see as much as possible of Terre de Conte before she eventually had to find a way back to the castle.

It had been a cold day, and the snow had started to fall as she reached the northern lands. Of course this didn’t affect the princess at all. Being able to handle any kind of weather like her could be great at times, though it had its bad sides as well. Yet another time she had forgotten taking on winter clothes and was wandering around only in a thin dress and small high heeled shoes. She wasn’t wearing that much accessories, making her look like a noble and not really a princess. Sticking out among people like a princess could be dangerous, someone could try stealing since she hadn’t any guards with her. All Virgilia wanted was to see as much of this strange country as a normal person and not anyone special. This though didn’t happen, and she had gotten many strange looks earlier that day.

She found herself in a small dark market that was slightly lightened up by some torches by most of the stands. Being a vampire gave the young girl a great night vision better than humans as she was indeed a night creature that had learnt how to live in daylight. Stopping by some of the stands she took her time to look, maybe she could get a book at a place like this. She simply loved reading before going to bed; it calmed her down since she always found it hard to fall asleep. Then she found something that caught her eye.

The pretty blonde woman behind the stand seemed to be resting, maybe even sleeping. Not wanting to wake her up the princess reached for a copy of the volume and carefully picked it up studying its cover. It did indeed look interesting Virgilia thought. It was sad she hadn’t heard about it before as she had great knowledge about books also from Terre de Conte. In Bernkastel it was common that someone of lower rank could earn great money for selling their books, but it didn’t look like the same went for this place.

If she wanted to buy anything from this woman she didn’t have much other choices than to wake her up, and the princess lightly cleared her throat to get Laura’s attention.

["Babs" Delton]

"Oh!" She spun back toward her stand and stood up from the stool, standing a step to the right so the light of the torch could illuminate the table.

In front of her, she spotted one of the collections in bare, but un-shivering hands. The arms they belonged to showed cloth dyed in shades and intensities of fuchsia radiating closer to a burning scarlet in the fire's light. Because of the torch's ordinance-regulated height behind the stand, the patron's upper body was more a mix of silhouette and soft detail, only uneven swaths of light coming through and around the stand's posts and snow-caked canopy. Laura did not actively contemplate the patron's shape to be noble or greater during the slight second since she stood, but her body, remembering hours of instruction, locked her back as high and as straight as uncomfortably possible.

"Sorry about that--" As she started, she looked at the patron. In the poor light, their features were seemingly selected by the shadows to appear: a lock of fringe, a subtle jaw, and eyes, though rendered in shadow, presenting the possibility of curiosity. Curiosity could mean a sell, or maybe even a submission, she hoped. "--can I help you? Are you interested in local literature?"

[Virgilia de Artio]

Virgilia watched as the stranger stood up and chuckled lightly. A sell must truly mean a lot to this woman, Virgilia thought as she opened her mouth to reply but quickly closed it as she remembered. Even now years after what happened it were times when she would forget the fact that her tongue was gone.

Instead of using her voice the princess waved her hands, as if saying it was no need for an apology. She could imagine how the woman had been standing here for hours in the cold; of course she would be tired. The princess then spotted the hope in Laura’s eyes and quickly nodded to reply to her question.

["Babs" Delton]

She brushed her gloves against the charcoal surcoat over her legs, making sure any wet ink was rubbed off or dry, only then remembering the copy already in the woman's hands. Awkwardly without a copy to need to demonstrate with, she clasped her hands behind her back. For a second, she recalled the woman's nod, now only a scant few seconds old; the gesture felt unusual because she did not feel any indifference or superiority from it as she was used to when somebody from a visibly higher station nodded at her. She wanted to be curious, to ask the woman something, but she remembered her job.

"I take submissions of short writing from the city's folk and put them together every month. I cannot afford to pay for submissions, but I do make sure to include the name of the artists in case their work attracts a larger publisher. I also try to translate the works into other languages as best as I can keeping the strengths of the original intact. The original-language version is the first version that appears for each entry. If you're interested in a copy, they're only ten coppers for one and five more coppers for each additional copy."

[Virgilia de Artio]

Virgilia continued looking at the copy and opened it to have a quick look on the first page. She understood very well the original language, as a princess she had to know a certain amount of languages after all. Moving a little closer to the light a pretty handwriting came into sight. She was just about to start reading as she heard Laura’s voice and immediately closed the book, turning her attention to the seller.

The princess was indeed interested, and also found this stranger’s work interesting. It was impressive that she knew how to translate other’s work into other languages considering that she was a commoner. This surely was a nice idea, giving people a chance to be authors. People that might as well could be much better than authors that had money to be what they wanted. “Ah…” a sound escaped her mouth, though it wasn’t much of a word. She wanted to somehow tell this woman that she was interested but it was hard, she didn’t expect this woman to know sign language it would in fact be a surprise if she did.

After a moment of thinking one of her hands let go of the book and rose up to her throat. Not sure if the woman would understand, or see in the dark it was at least worth a try. She tried her best to signal that she couldn’t speak, first tapping her throat lightly and then flattening her hand waving it horizontally.

["Babs" Delton]

For seconds, Laura did not understand the gesture. She had seen it before though, almost just like this. Once she'd waved down a passer after a particularly long drought in sales. She gave her usual pitch to him, but when she finished, he give the same gesture, albeit with another near his ears. As he left her, his partner told her that he could not hear and so could not speak.

At first, she thought maybe that was the case with the woman in front of the table, but no, she acknowledged Laura's speech in context (at least that's what Laura guessed), but made the throat gesture.

"Oh! Um, just a moment." Laura reached down to her bag, still somewhat weighty from extra copies of the month's volume, and found another piece of paper. The front of it was where she had misspelled a word while writing a translation, but the back of the homemade paper was still blank. She came back up with the blank-sided scrap, dipped her pen into its frosty inkwell (she thought that she should heat the inkwell soon before it started to freeze over), and held the two towards the woman in the oscillating shadows, neverminding a drop of ink soaking into the sleeve of her woolen green dress as she held the back of the pen forward.

"Is...is this alright?"

[Virgilia de Artio]

Virgilia waited, not sure if the stranger had understood what she meant. But when Laura asked her to wait, she got her hopes up. Maybe she had gotten what she meant. She stood still and watched as she reached down to her bag and then found the piece of paper and the pen.

The princess frowned as she watched the drop of ink that fell down on her dress. Ink stains was hard to get off clothes, she remembered that from the times she had been punished for spilling ink on her dresses. After placing the volume she had been holding down on the table, Virgilia smiled thankfully to the blonde woman and carefully took the pen and paper, making sure not to touch the other woman’s hands. She was probably freezing enough as it was.

She nodded and put the paper down on the table, starting to write her message. But then after writing for a moment the pen started to freeze and the ink was no longer able to write with. Stepping back she quickly dropped the deep frozen pen down on the table. The pen was covered in ice and now lying next to the paper. ‘Yes thank you. And to answer your question, I am indeed intere--’ was written on it though it she hadn't finished writing her message.

["Babs" Delton]

As the silent customer started to write and Laura had nothing immediately pressing to do or say, her mind slammed into the spirit of wonder. She wanted to watch the ink on her old dress' sleeve dry, but her eyes were locked on the thin, wet lines the customer wrote, glistening for a second in the amber glow before taking on the full depths of black.

Laura watched the customer's hand as she wrote. So many factors determined the lines of handwriting: does the writer balance their hand closer to the wrist or further up the hand? Do they use their elbow as a balance point and write with more arm movements than finger movements? Do they bring their fingers into a crushing appearance on the pen or a gentle hold? Laura knew that, growing up, paying such an incredible attention to such simple things often led her to frustrating etiquette, but how often were the people she left behind happy? She'd ask them, Is the simplest moment not worth experiencing?

While she watched the customer write the line, she noticed the light of the flame reflect off the pen's surface. Since the table was fully illuminated by the torch, she could see it clearly: frost forming from the points of the customer's touch out along the pen. Her mind fought to focus on the possibility of that happening, to think about the magic that surely was at work, but Laura kept her focus on the beauty of the phenomenon until the frost crept onto the base of the pen's nib. In one more second, the ink froze, the nib's surface now a shimmering crystalline black.

Laura read the scrap when the curious customer put it down, imagining at speed that some of the lines were mountains, valleys, or sweeping tidal waves. Despite the cold and the rough surface of the paper and table, each line was artfully clean and free of any evidence of an unpracticed hand. If there was a way, she thought, she would just put that handwriting in a copy of the monthly collection. Something like an itch arose in her index finger, as if from the bone.

Laura picked up the pen, immediately feeling the slight chill of it through her gloves, and the glass inkwell as well. She put the inkwell and the nib of the pen up to the torch for several seconds, then brought them back. Through her glove, she could feel the inkwell's heat. Thankfully, the handle of the pen was wood, so the handle was still comfortably frosty. Laura placed the inkwell at the side and center of the table, dipped the burning hot nib into the ink, and wrote under the customer's writing, the weight of her class-oriented upbringing immediately weighing on her shoulders are she started:

"Please pardon me, I being common, if I am being too forward in asking, but do you have any works that you would like to submit? The people should see your handwriting. If I may be so bold, I would gladly spend a night and a day trying to produce its form on a single copy."

[Virgilia de Artio]

Virgilia was still in shock from what had happened. She knew she didn’t have much control over these powers but it happened so rarely that she used them, so it was quite the surprise every time it happened. What surprised her most was that the stranger seemed to take it even better than herself, it almost looked like it amused her more than scared her.

Seeing that the other woman picked up the pen she stepped forward towards the light again, though kept her head low. The last thing the princess wanted was to have anyone scared of her, and this ice magic was just one of many thing that could scare this woman off. Watching how the blonde heated up the pen she couldn’t help but let a smile grace her lips.

She leant forward, reading the stranger’s reply. What stood there made her eyes widen slightly. Virgilia moved her hand forward to pick up the pen, wanting to write a reply. Trying her best not to freeze the pen again she started moving the pen. “oh!” just then remembering that it needed some more ink, she dipped it some times it in before writing her message.

‘First I just want to tell you that there’s no need for you to reply on this paper. My ears are perfectly fine and I like listening to people talking. Then I want to tell you how much I like this idea, giving people the chance to write like this. You’re such a great person for doing this.

I’m very interested in buying anything that can be bought and help you as much as possible. But please don’t spend your time on anything I have written. What I like is to read and listen, and I have not much of a writing gift. But how about you? Do you sell anything you’ve written yourself?’

She lay the pen carefully down on the table and pushed the paper over towards Laura. This time the pen hadn’t froze, though it was cold. The princess straightened herself up and looked at the sky, it was starting to get late and it was a long way back to the castle. Still she couldn’t leave this place, though the idea of finding her way back on her own scared her a little.

["Babs" Delton]

Laura placed the scrap on her side of the stand and read. She immediately felt a little silly for writing earlier, though doing so had an oddly youthful appeal, as if she'd been passing notes behind an instructor's back. The only supervisor of her activities now was the dark and the cold which seemed still more comforting than a classics teacher. As she scanned, the woman's compliment warmed her underneath the layers of wool. Perhaps it felt strangely more powerful looking at it in ink rather than hearing it. Reading the rest in the woman's seemingly regal handwriting, Laura looked down to the leg of her stool where the charred remains of her earlier attempt at natural (maybe even lovely) poetry rested in the snow and grit of the street.

"Well, I might someday--" Laura reached for the pen and brought it back up to the torch for a few more seconds of heating "--but my work isn't quite right...I..." It occurred to her that if she explained the problem, she might give away her old status. "...I suppose I'm still learning," she finished, trying to seem sheepish. Then, as she tried to withdraw the nib from the heat, the fire of the torch simply stopped. She blinked a few times as she tried reflexively to understand what had happened. If it now weren't for the faint candlelight of buildings' windows or the dim coming from the market around the corner, she wouldn't be able to see. She blinked, touching the torch. There weren't even any embers with which to light the extra torch; the post was now as cold at the bottom as it was at the once-flaming top.

As the fluff of snow stuck to her hair, already gone knotted from the day's moisture, she found herself irritated at the pen. Wasn't the pen merely just a little cold? Wouldn't the torch go out on the first try since the pen was much colder then? Still, it was magic, and who was she to assume how it worked?

"My torch just...I don't even know, not really." A handful of the stands in the market might have had torches still burning, but she did not want to deal with them. If she was lucky, one might charge her to let her light her extra. No. If she were actually lucky, one of the evening guards she knew would be around to light the extra, but they could have been anywhere in the city at the point. A slight pinch of cold from the snow on her head was a suitable reminder; it was late and snowing. Would it be so bad to leave for the day?

[Virgilia de Artio]

As she heard the woman’s reply Virgilia immediately could sense that this woman did indeed like to write herself. She also noticed how the woman stopped speaking as if making sure not to tell Virgilia something before ending her reply smoothly. This made Virgilia doubt Laura’s words for a moment but she decided to let it be, not wanting to intrude in someone’s personal life.

Virgilia got close to the same reaction as Laura as she watched the fire that suddenly disappeared. Then the confusion in Virgilia’s mind went to shock and soon panic. This was her fault. If she hadn’t frozen the pen the fire wouldn’t have been extinguished and this stranger would still have the light that she obviously needed. The princess wondered why Laura didn’t seem to be angry with her after what had just happened, she absolutely had all the reason to be.

“Ah… ah…” The small sounds coming from the princess’ mouth soon turned into small sobs, “I…I…” she desperately started looking around, seeing if she could get Laura a new torch but could only see someone on a couple of stands that weren’t as close as she’d hoped. The last thing Virgilia wanted was to have this stranger thinking she was just running away after doing this. But still she had to find another torch for the bookseller.

["Babs" Delton]

What right did she have to think of leaving early? When she started her job, she hadn't done so thinking to finish each day on hands and knees, but wasn't that exactly what it had come to? No, she thought, she wasn't going to think like this. The magic that snuffed her light was a mystery, something that her tired frustration could not explain. The feeling just seemed to soak into the thought that this was all her fault instead because it made some sort of sense. Maybe if she had been better at dealing with others, she would be in the market with the other reputable vendors, sharing fires. After all, she reminded herself, Babs went from a failed fruitier to Alonia's foremost earner by her skill.

Behind her, she heard the customer's voice in a trembling timbre sharply abbreviated by gasps that only sounded halfway controlled. A sharp feeling raked up her back and chilled the skin of her shoulders. Being in the presence of urgent emotion felt like falling into cold water, both shocking and refreshing, but her eyes were almost pierced with heat and tears for the shame of thinking of this being any refreshing in the slightest.

The customer somehow froze the torch, but as a feeling before a thought, Laura knew it was an accident. She turned to face the kind customer, albeit in the virtual darkness of the thin street.

"Please..." she found herself pausing, trying to meet the woman's eyes in the dim, to show that she meant what she was trying to say. "Please...don't worry about it. It was an accident, right? I'm probably a bit silly for being out here on nights like this anyways, so...please don't let it bother you."

[Virgilia de Artio]

Virgilia’s eyes met the stranger’s and her words seemed to calm her down a little. After a moment she stopped sobbing and quickly wiped her tears feeling ashamed of having broken down in tears because of this. Virgilia didn’t cry much, and most people had never seen her cry. One of the reasons was that the princess never cried if something bad happened to herself. She cried because of guilt and would always shed tears if she watched people in pain or hurt.

Knowing that the bookseller looked at it as an accident made the princess feel better. At least she didn’t think she did it on purpose. As the other woman talked, the princess made sure to nod at the right places. First to confirm the fact that it was an accident and then when she told her not to let it bother her. Even so, the princess couldn’t shake off the guilt and desperately sought for a way to make it up to the woman.

The idea of giving some kind of payment to the woman reached her mind and even though she hated always being able to take the easy way out because she was rich, it usually helped. The princess had of course not gone out without bringing some money in a handbag she was carrying. Finding a couple of gold pieces in the bag she quickly held it out to the woman, hoping she could see what it was. Maybe the woman knew a place where she could buy a new torch.

["Babs" Delton]

Laura's shoulders relaxed and the next breath arrived smooth and cool after she spoke even though the air still felt taut. The kind, strange woman in the dark reached into her handbag.

Laura consciously brought in her next breath with practiced ease. She had felt compromised for a brief moment, and there was no doubt that her customer felt especially compromised. Would she take coin in this situation?

Dull metallic scraping sounded, and there they were, only barely recognizable in the encroaching dark: a small, collapsed stack of what Laura could only imagine were coppers thrust out in the woman's now-tense hand. Laura looked at the coins; they held no appeal to her right now.

Sometimes...sometimes...

Laura extended her ink-stained, gloved hand. "Sometimes life has to have its say, I suppose. 'Take the rest of the day, you've been working too hard La-'" She caught herself. "'Babs.'" Laura gently pushed against the woman's hand, against the fingers, suggesting them to close on the money, and then she started to collect the volumes. "It doesn't have a mouth to speak, so sometimes life has to find another way, like putting out the work light an hour early."

Feeling lighter, Laura left the volume that the customer initially looked at alone on the stand in front of her, hoping that the customer would take it, packing up the rest into the canvas bag underneath the table. The stand was a permanent fixture that she rented, so she only needed to take the torches and bag with her with whatever money she earned in a pouch inside.

She strung the bag over her shoulder and carried the two spent torches and the one extra in her arms. So they would be safer, she put the capped inkwell and pen into her dress' pocket after rinsing them in the snow and wiping them on the bag.

"I rent my house from one of the taverners so he doesn't mind stocking a little bit of tea for me." The thought of capping her light feeling with some hot tea (as she usually had to soak tea in cold water at her house) brought out the pleasant strain of a smile. "If you're not on your way somewhere and the melodious songs of drunkards doesn't bother you, you're welcome to come. I think he has a lot of matches for his candles, so I don't think we need to worry about ink and light." Laura crinkled her brow at a small realization.

"I don't even know your name, after all."