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tetrahedrals · 4 years

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False Life

(A small dnd story that gradually got less small, for @snuffes, @prideling and @theherocomplex ❤️ )

...

The girl has a fever.

Nothing so simple as a broken bone wanting to be reset, a sprain to be splinted, or even (her personal favorite) a gangrenous limb to be deftly cut away and studied later in private. No, fevers are tricky things; not necessarily dangerous in and of themselves so much as a last-ditch attempt by the body to make itself inhospitable to infection. It’s whatever lies at the root of the ailment that worries her, the secret malady hidden away somewhere in the blood or the bones, looking out from behind the whites of the eyes, smugly impervious to the touch of her needles or the sharp teeth of her bonesaw.

Posthuma bites her lip, thinks about using one of her new words, learnt in long hours bent over the bedsides of white-faced, perspiring strangers, threading neat sutures into flesh until her back aches and her fingers cramp. It’s been a brand new kind of education, the things people say when they are in pain, or anticipation of it. Some nights when she can’t sleep it all comes unspooled in her head, one long, quicksilver ribbon of profanity and prayer, individual words bitten off here and there like lumps of hard taffy, mingled with pleas to gods whose names she’s only ever seen written in the tattered pages of her mother’s library. Now, looking down at this glassy-eyed child, her cheeks glowing crimson in the flickering hearthlight, she thinks she could just about recite the whole tortured litany by heart.

“She’ll need fluids,” she says instead, leaning over to fumble through her bag. She pulls a muslin sachet from her kit and begins stuffing it with herbs: blessed thistle, boneset, anise seed, and a generous handful of dried peppermint. It’s not much more than a diaphoretic, but it’s the best she has to offer against whatever unseen adversary is wreaking havoc on the girl’s immune system. She thrusts it toward the anxious mother without making eye contact. “This will help. Brew it up fresh every hour and have her drink as much as she can keep down.”

The woman catches her wrist. “Please,” she whispers, her voice scraped raw by emotion. Posthuma’s eyes briefly flit up to meet her gaze before flinching away from the bright intensity of anguish reflected there. The hand around hers tightens. “Isn’t there anything more you can do?”

In the remote woodland towns and hamlets she’s previously visited people have been grateful for the services of a healer, however unsophisticated those services may be. But this village lies along a trading route favored by merchants and convoys transporting their wares to the capital. Here they want magic with a capital M, the kind that can reknit flesh and bone. The only spells Posthuma knows are insubstantial fancies; incantations to mend and to clean, a few simple hexes, a charm to make a hollow cheek look full, and the trick of spinning a bit of coal and bat fur into a shadow large enough to hide in. Small spells, barely more than parlor tricks, not proper magic, and certainly not the kind that will satisfy a mother who has stood watch over her child’s sickbed for the better part of a week.

She shakes her head, gently extricates herself from the woman’s vise-like grip. “In cases like this, the body knows best. We just have to help it do its work.”

“You’ll stay, then?” There’s a ferocity to the woman’s gaze that borders on desperation, as if she’s afraid Posthuma will disappear if she so much as blinks.

Posthuma hesitates, trying to remember how long it’s been since she last cast the vitality charm upon herself. It won’t do to show her real face here. People don’t like it when a healer looks ill. But she already knows it won’t matter, that she won’t be able to turn away from this woman whose love for her daughter radiates off her like heat from a conflagration. It is a warmth Posthuma equally craves and fears.

“I’ll stay,” she says softly, and if she feels something like hunger at the look of relief on the woman’s face, well, it will fade away soon enough.

She spends the next six hours changing sweat-soaked linens, sponging the girl’s flushed forehead, and brewing cups of hot, bitter tea, while the woman frets beside her, stroking the girl’s hair. When the fever finally breaks they are all exhausted. Mother and daughter swiftly drift off into a deep, restful slumber, their hands twined together.

There is a knock at the bedroom door, and a man pokes his head in. When he sees the sleeping pair he thanks her effusively, and presses a gold coin into her hands, which she accepts with reluctance. She prefers to barter for her services when she can. But she’ll need to eat tonight, and refresh her supplies for the journey to the next town, and then of course there’s the sorry state of her cloak and boots to take into consideration. They’ve been patched and mended so often that in some places the leather has gone thin as linen, but you can’t make something out of nothing, and she’ll have to start saving if she’s to be able to afford to replace them. Quietly she pockets the gold and gathers up her things, sparing one final glance toward the bed.

Something churns painfully inside her at the sight of the pair of them curled around each other. A daughter who would grow up without seeing her mother slowly eaten alive by grief and regret. A mother who wouldn’t have to watch her daughter dwindle further into infirmity with each passing year. Her eyes sting, and she turns away, blinking.

“You all right, miss?”

He’s standing too close. “I’m fine,” she says, straightening up, and pushing the hair out of her face. “Just something caught in my eye.” She turns to give him what she hopes is a reassuring smile, and watches in dismay as his eyes widen, concern edging into alarm.

He takes a step back. “Pardon my saying so, but you don’t look well.”

She’s been careless, let the charm fade from her face. She knows what he sees now; the bruised circles under her eyes, dull waxen skin, the hair streaked with grey. She has no right to be vain about her looks, but still, sometimes she wishes people would be more circumspect in how they stare at her. It only serves as a reminder of things she’d rather forget.

She watches him nervously lick his lips, start to offer her shelter for the night, and then hesitate, thinking the better of it.

“It’s late,” she says quickly, hoping to spare them both the awkwardness of his misgivings. “I should be getting on.”

There’s a second in which she thinks he’ll protest, but then his mouth thins into a hard line. He gives her a curt nod, and she knows that for all his previous gratitude, he’ll be glad to see her go.

Outside the cool night air against her skin is a relief after the stuffy heat of the cottage. Looking up, she takes a moment to try and find the constellations she knows, like searching for a familiar face in a crowd. But without the reassuring framework of tree branches to guide her eye, the sky seems vast and limitless, and all the stars are strangers.

Picking her way across the empty cobblestone streets, Posthuma pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders, tucking her arms against her chest. This life isn’t much like one she imagined for herself back under the winding green-black boughs of her mother’s forest. But there is satisfaction in helping people, and a daily sense of discovery at sussing out the secret inner workings of the living body. Organs and tissue whose functions she had previously only guessed at took on an entirely new significance when galvanized by the palpitations of a beating heart. She is routinely amazed at how oblivious people seem to be to everything happening just beneath their skin. Then again, living people went around every day with so much blood in them, it was a wonder they got anything done at all. On the whole, she thinks her new life might just be bearable, if only it wasn’t so lonely.

…

The tavern is grander and more crowded than she expected, and she hesitates in the doorway, deliberating. This town is the farthest into civilization she’s dared to venture, and now she worries it’s been too much too soon. But the snatches of laughter and conversation that float through the open windows carry the promise of irresistible enticements; warm food, cheerful company, and a balm to the stifling loneliness gathering like black bile at the base of her throat.

Just one night, she thinks, her eyes fixed greedily on the animated faces lit by the glowing hearth. One night as a normal girl, surrounded by people who won’t stare at her with pity or disgust. When dawn comes she’ll slip back through the edge of the forest to somewhere smaller and quieter where no one will look at her twice. Her mind made up, she pulls her hood up over her head and steps inside.

To her surprise and delight she spots a massive dragonborn sitting at the far end of the bar. She’s dressed like something out of a picture book; shining silver plate armor with a red ribbon tied in a bow around one horn, her blue scales incongruously bright amidst the drab, utilitarian garb of the traders and townsfolk. The sheer unexpected thrill of her presence here is a small pleasure to be savored, like finding a newly minted penny glinting out from a handful of dull, tarnished coins. The seat next to her is empty, and for one breathless moment Posthuma imagines what it might be like to saunter over and drop down onto the barstool beside her as casually as if she belonged there.

“Oi!” She’s startled out of her daydream as the barman leans forward, snapping his fingers in her face. “No loitering,” he says, giving her a suspicious look that encompasses her dusty boots, wan skin, and the patches on her cloak. “Buy something or be on your way.” ”

She swallows and tries to muster a smile, shrinking back further into her hood. When she asks the rate for room and board, he names a price that makes her wince, but she dutifully counts out the silvers and slides them across the varnished wood.

“Here we are,” he says, cheerfully handing over a key dangling from a worn brass ring, his demeanor greatly improved by her willingness to part with her coin. “I’ll send Verna up with your supper.”

“Oh,” Posthuma says, darting a quick glance over her shoulder at the crowded room. “I… I was hoping to eat down here, if that’s all right.”

“It’ll cost you extra,” he says, already brandishing an expectant palm. “We’ve got an entertainer coming in tonight.”

An entertainer? Posthuma feels her spirits lift. An entertainer meant music, or play-acting, or maybe even singing. It meant something bright and lively to break up the brittle dreariness of small towns and muddy boots and people glad to see her gone at the end of the day.

Her boots and cloak will last a little longer, she decides, handing over the coin. In the smaller towns where she’s headed no one will mind a few extra patches here and there. And tonight she is hungry for something more than just food.

She picks a small table at the back of the tavern near the crackling hearth, where she can soak in the warmth of the fire and steal private glances at the people gathered within without calling attention to herself. The dragonborn is gone, she registers with a pang of disappointment. The room seems dimmer without her in it. She tries to console herself by studying the other faces at the tables. On her right, a dwarven man is in the midst of what appears to be a heated and entirely one-sided discourse with his tablemates about the price of horses, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there is a large chunk of food caught in his beard. Several times during the course of his impassioned gesticulations it looks at risk of falling directly into his beer, but each time, to Posthuma’s immense frustration, it remains stuck fast.

A barmaid in a tightly cinched brown smock leans down to deposit a mug of ale in front of her, and then sashays away, leaving a chorus of tipsy admirers in her wake. Posthuma watches her wistfully for a moment before turning to inspect her beer. It’s a dark brown stout, bitter enough to make her wince, but it will serve her purposes. Casting a furtive look around, she dips her fingers into the suds and mutters the vitality incantation. She feels the familiar flush of the charm warming its way through her blood, as the aches and pains of the day are smoothed away. Licking the foam from her pinky, she pulls the end of her braid out of her hood to examine it. To her satisfaction she finds it a lustrous black, the dry, grey strands gone as if they had never been.

She allows herself to relax, lowering the hood of her cloak. When the barmaid returns with a plate of stew, Posthuma smiles brightly up at her, and relishes the friendly nod she gets in return. Settling further into her chair, surrounded by warmth and the chatter of many voices, she feels something cold and hard inside her chest begin to slowly unwind.

A flash of crimson catches her eye. Posthuma blinks, momentarily unsure of herself, but no, there really is a halfling woman in a red feathered hat nearly twice her size gracefully weaving her way through the crowded tables and chairs toward the bandstand at the front of the room. Hopping lightly up onto the stage, she unstraps her lute, and, pushing her long hair back over one shoulder, begins to carefully adjust its strings, her fingers moving quickly and confidently over the instrument’s slender neck.

Posthuma stares, her breath caught in her throat. The halfling woman is beautiful— not merely pretty or attractive, but blessed with that otherworldly degree of heart-stopping beauty which renders its bearer as distinct and disparate from the rest of mankind as gold from clay. One might expect to feel shabby or less-than in comparison to such physical perfection, but somehow the glow of her beauty enhances rather than detracts from those around her. It is as though she absorbs all the light in the room and reflects it back tenfold, so that faces seem kinder, the fire warmer, even the ale sweeter simply for being in her presence.

All over the room conversations slowly halt and fade away, until at last the only sound in the tavern is the woman on stage humming softly to herself as she tunes her instrument. As she finishes, she glances up at the crowd through her lashes with a conspiratorial smile, as if she is pleased to have caught them all staring. With a small flourish she reaches up to the band of her wide-brimmed hat and pulls out a tortoiseshell plectrum.

“Good evening, esteemed lords and ladies,” she says archly, dipping into a nimble bow. Her voice is deeper than Posthuma expected; rich and melodious, and seemingly outsized in proportion to her small body. “I’m Ruby Nightflower.”

As the opening chords reverberate through the room, she begins to sing so sweetly Posthuma feels her heart might shatter into a thousand pieces from the sound of it. It’s a sad song with a hauntingly familiar melody Posthuma thinks she might have heard somewhere once before, long ago. When it comes to an end she is so enraptured it takes her a moment to realize that people have begun whispering and turning their heads in her direction. Alarmed, she reaches up to check that the charm is still in place, only to find her face wet. She has been crying, she realizes belatedly, is still crying now, the tears rolling down her cheeks faster than she can stop them.

Mortified and overwhelmed, she clumsily rises from her chair, nearly knocking over her own ale in the process, and bolts across the crowded room for the back door.

Once she’s safely outside in the dark, she leans against the wall of the tavern and closes her eyes, breathing hard. It was foolish of her to come here tonight, she thinks, her arms tucked in tight against her chest. She takes in a deep breath of the cool night air, trying to calm her racing mind, but the thoughts are coming faster than she can stop them now. Of course she couldn’t help making a scene of herself, she doesn’t belong here, she might as well go home, she ought to have never left in the first place—

“Hey,” says a voice close enough to make her jump. “Are you okay?”

Standing in the doorway of the tavern, staring up at her with impossibly wide brown eyes, is Ruby Nightflower. As she registers Posthuma’s distress, her perfect brows knit together, and she reaches up to place a gentle hand on Posthuma’s shoulder. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am for upsetting you back there. I hope you can forgive me.“

Posthuma, now rendered fully speechless, stares at her.

“But also,” Ruby says, inching closer, “if it’s not too much trouble, do you think you could give me some feedback? Specifically, which part of my song was it that offended you? Because I find constructive criticism is so important to my artistic development, and it would really help to know if it was, say, the musical arrangement, or the singing, or-”

Posthuma tries to speak, but all that comes out is a strangled noise.

“That bad, huh.” Ruby sighs dramatically and slumps back against the wall, twirling a thick lock of glossy hair around her finger. “I knew I should have started off with a warm-up. It was that last chorus, wasn’t it? I could feel it going south on me, but then I thought, ‘power through, Ruby, put some extra oomph into it and no one will notice if you’re a little off key’-“

“Your song was wonderful,” Posthuma blurts out before she can stop herself. “You’re probably the best singer I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I’m the one who should be apologizing for disrupting your performance.” She’s staring. She can feel herself flushing as she realizes it, but she still can’t bring herself to look away.

“Oh,” Ruby says, looking a little startled. She quickly recovers her aplomb, flashing Posthuma a brilliant smile. “Well in that case, thank you! Always happy to meet a new fan! And really, there’s no need to apologize.” She pauses, tilting her heart-shaped face up to peer suspiciously at Posthuma. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Posthuma says, scrubbing at her eyes with one hand and fervently wishing she knew a spell that would allow her sink into the earth and stay there forever. “I’m just out here being stupid, and meanwhile I’m sure everyone inside is wondering where you went-”

Ruby snorts. “Let them wait,” she says, with a dismissive wave. “It’s not like I’m getting paid for this gig. The guy behind the bar told me there’d be lots of influential people staying here tonight, and that it’d be worth it for the exposure alone. But I don’t know,” she says, aiming a doubtful glance back through the tavern door. “Do any of these people look like patrons of the arts to you?”

Posthuma carefully studies the room, considering. “That dwarf with the egg in his beard might be influential,” she volunteers. “He’s convinced at least four of the people at his table to sit somewhere else.” The last holdout, a craggy-featured man with the build of a well-seasoned traveler, is starting to look a little desperate.

She’s startled by the bright peal of Ruby’s laughter, and turns to find the halfling doubled over a fit of giggles. Posthuma tentatively smiles back, though she’s not sure she understands the joke.

Ruby wipes her eyes, still grinning. “What did you say your name was?”

She freezes, her mind going blank. “Posthuma Sweetbriar,” she says finally, pulling the last name from memory— one of her first towns outside the forest, a family who’d treated her with unexpected compassion, kind, generous people she won’t see again.

Thankfully, Ruby doesn’t seem to have noticed her hesitation. “Well, Posthuma,” she says, producing a small mirrored compact from her bodice, “it looks like I’ll be walking away from this gig empty handed.” She flips it open with a practiced flick of her wrist, revealing a circle of soft pressed powder the color of faded summer light. With one fingertip she begins to expertly dab it along the edge of her cheekbones and the inner corners of her eyes, until the skin there glows with the iridescent shimmer of crushed pearls. “At least I got the owner to agree to comp my drinks for the night. Probably saw my height and figured he’d still come out ahead, the cheapskate.” She purses her lips, sucks in her cheeks, and aims a ferocious glare at the mirror. “He’s lucky he’s never met my Grandma Baxter. She’d have put him out of business.” Miming a kiss at herself, she closes the compact with a snap and turns to fix Posthuma with a radiant smile. “Maybe after this next set you could join me at the bar and help me extract my fee?”

At this proximity, being on the receiving end of one of Ruby’s smiles feels a bit like having a sunbeam shining directly into her face. “I’d love that,” Posthuma says, dazzled half out of her wits, and not entirely convinced this isn’t all some strange and wonderful dream.

“Great!” Ruby jumps up, and holds out her hand. “Now will you please come back inside? I promise my next song won’t be such a downer.”

Posthuma hesitates, trying to calculate how long she’ll be able to keep up the charm. At least another hour, maybe longer if she’s careful. Just the thought of exposing her true face to Ruby makes her dizzy with panic. But what was the point of leaving home only to skulk in the shadows?

As she looks at the outstretched hand in front of her, she is overcome by a bittersweet, undefined longing. There was so much richness and beauty to be found in this world. Each day offered a feast of a thousand new and unimaginable delights, if only you were brave enough to reach for them.

Sneaking one last glance up at the stars for courage, Posthuma cautiously accepts her new friend’s hand, and follows her back into the warmth and light of the tavern.

#dnd #ruby nightflower #posthuma sweetbriar

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