Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Reading Lessons

The day Ser August met the twins
Art by Sonia Carreras


9:15, 8th day of Solace:
I can’t believe what those brats did. Today my shades had it harder to find them. They were like… blocked. “Templar magic”, they hissed to me, and I couldn’t understand… so I looked into their simple, useless minds. Can you imagine? They had tried to steal from a templar! And that… that son of a bitch, instead of sending them to the guards as other victims did… took them under their protection? I’m sure he’s using them to watch me… Must be more careful… I’ll send the shadows only during the night. Their power must be about to wake up soon, I can feel it… so close… I can’t lose the chance to a stupid templar… if he discovers them before me, I may lose them forever. Must kill that templar. As soon as they wake up, I’ll kill him.
Excerpt from Edanhor Blank’s journal, as found in Highever on 9:25, 14th day of Haring)
 



I’m on my way to fetch Eve to attend our lesson with Ser August when I hear her shout.
“Leave me alone!”

I rush to the dead end alley where the shout seems to come from.

“Come on, sweetie! I’m sure you have a kiss for me too! Or do you save all of them for that templar friend of yours?”

Damn. It seems Miriel’s voice. That bully is always trying to find one of us alone.

“Shem lover, shem lover!!”. A choir of teenager voices laughs at Miriel’s comment. I turn the corner and I find her, trying to get rid of Miriel’s hands, while other boys grab her. One is even pulling her braid. Ouch.

“Lyn!” I shout. We always call the other Lyn when there’s other people near. That way they never are sure which one of us they are facing. “Release her, you bullshit!!!”

“Here she comes”, scowls Miriel, a blond elf, taller and stronger than the average… and of course, dumber. “The other shem lover”

“We’re not shem lovers!” Eve shouts. Wrong answer, my dear. That only provokes another round of laughs.

I put my hands on my hips and look at Miriel at the eyes.

“What’s the problem, Miriel? Does it hurt to think that even an old shem full of scars is more attractive than you?”

Here. Hit him where it hurts, I think when I look at how his face changes. He releases Eve to face me. And since the wits battle is too much for him, he tries to punch me. Predictable. I see it coming and I dodge it easily. And Eve profits the moment of distration to sink her elbow in the stomach of the elf who is grabbing her from behind and release herself.

We kick and punch and bite some elven stomachs, legs and ears. But they’re too many and finally Miriel kicks my ankles and forces me to fall to the ground. Someone hits Eve’s head too and she falls over me. Then I watch Miriel’s hand going to his trousers and… he starts urinating over us. The others soon follow him laughing, after some hesitation.

“Shem lovers! That’s the only thing you deserve!”

I’m boiling out of rage an humillation, but before I can get up and give that swine what he deserves, I hear a female voice coming.

“Soris!!! Miriel!!! What are you doing? Leave those girls alone!!!”

Adaia appears like a flaming angel and grabs her nephew’s ear. Poor Soris, he was just the only one who had not dared to join the fight. Of course he had done nothing to prevent it either, but knowing Eve, who has a soft spot for him, she will swear he has done it out of knighthood more than of cowardly.

“Aie, aie, auntie!!!”, Soris protests. Not even Miriel dares to face her, he knows Adaia will have a long talk to his parents and that even if they also despise the little twin rats, they’ll reprimend him for having been caught, so he rushes away down the alley and only Adaia, Soris and what’s left of our dignity stay there.

Adaia releases Soris and kneels to help us.

“Are you all right, girls?”

“We’ve been better”, I scowl.

“Come home, you can wash and I can lend you clean clothes. And a warm cup of tea. You need it”.

“Ser August is waiting for us”, Eve starts.
“And you don’t want to go like that to the templars’ headquarters, do you?”

Adaia’s smile is warm and I know we can’t refuse her offer. She’s always been kind to us and all we know about fighting we have learnt from her. I get up and follow her.

“Each time you’re a bit taller, girls. Soon you’ll be taller than me”.

Thin and tall, yes. That’s one of our distinctive traits. But since we don’t remember our parents, we don’t know who we have inherited that trait from. The red hair seems quite common in the alienage, though.

“You’ve fought well. But I need to teach you some evasive maneuvers, specially in cases like this one, when there are too many people against you”, she says softly. Soris looks at her, still rubbing his ear.

“Can I go home, auntie?”

“Go. But I’ll talk to your father later”, she says. Soris gulps and rushes away.

Adaia’s home is humble but warm. It has never been one of the worst ones in the alienage, but of course it has nothing to do with the shem’s houses we’ve sneaked into more than once. Her child looks at us, while playing with a wooden horse. Adaia also trains her with us, but even she doesn’t speak to us often.

She asks us to take our tunics off and while we wash our hair and bodies she boils some water to prepare a warm tea.
Then she applies some elfroot paste to our bruises (she makes it herself with elfroot she cultivates in the back courtyard) and lends us a couple of old tunics who belonged to herself.

“Keep these”, she says. “The ones you had were too small and were too torn. It’s better to discard them”

I see by the corner of the eye that she has left the old tunics away to wash them. I wonder if her daughter will inherite them somehow. Nothing can be wasted in the alienage.

“We can’t accept them, Adaia” I start.

“Oh, you can. I was going to donate these to the orphanage all the same, so I prefer you to get them than any of the other spoiled children there”.

I shrug. I’ve tried, so now I can keep it without feeling guilty. I sip my tea. It’s still too hot, but make me feel better.

“You fought bravely, girls”, she says. “But you need to know how to react when there are too many people. Tomorrow we will focus on that, okey?”

Eve nods. Her pride is the one who was more hurt today.

“We could cut our hair”, she suggests, surely recalling how one of the boys pulled her braid.

“No way” I say. “Don’t let them make us change our looks because they frighten us. I’m not going to cut it. I’m proud of it”.

And if I don’t cut it, she won’t either, because that will mean we will be different. Though of course the opposite works, if she decided to cut it, I’d feel forced to cut it too. I’m glad she agrees.

“You’re right. Next time I’ll just be more careful”

I smile and finish my tea. It is time to meet Ser August. He will be worried by now. Adaia understands and lets us go, after making sure our hair is already dried and our bruises a bit better. Our pride heals fast, it has already too many scars.

“Sorry we were late, Ser August”, I greet the templar when we enter the room where he spends a bit of his free time helping us to learn how to write and read, and to do simple maths. I appreciate this more than he can imagine, since in the orphanage nobody seems to care to give us the smallest education.

The old templar (oh, well, for me he’s old anyway) smiles warmly.
 

 
  The twins and Ser August
Art by Pham Ngoc Trinh

“No problem, Mari”. How he can tell which one of us we are still creeps me out. At first he was wrong often, but in the last months he seems to have learnt how to tell who we are quite well and I only can recall two or three mistakes. “You’re here and that’s what counts”.

“What are we going to read today, Ser August?” asks Eve with her eyes shinning. She loves books, much more than me, and this moment is her favorite in the week. The humiliation and the bruises have soon been forgotten. We’re used to that, after all.

“You choose, little one”, says the templar. “Which is your favorite story so far?”

“She loves Aveline’s story”, I tease her. “Because Aveline is Evelyn in Orlesian, and she’s a big and clumsy warrior like her”. Evelyn is better at fighting than me. I’m just more ruthless.

“No, I don’t!”, she protests. “Aveline was stupid, she let that warrior kill her! And you’re as big and clumsy as I am, we’re identical!”

I giggle while dodging her friendly fist.
“And yours, Mari?”, asks Ser August. “Which is your favourite one?”

I shrug

“I don’t know. There aren’t stories about elven heros after all, are they?”

“Well, you have Shartan’s story… he was an elf”.

“Religious shit”, I start, but Evelyn kicks me under the table.

“Show some respect!”, she adds. She’s right. Ser August is nice to us. I may not share his religious beliefs, but I should respect them.

“Sorry. But no, I don’t like it. Shartan was just Andraste’s pet”.

If my comments offended him, he doesn’t show. I envy his patience. Maybe that’s why I test it so much.

“And then?” he smiles. “Which is your favorite?”

I look around, nervous. Ser August and Evelyn are looking at me, and I try to remember a story about a badass hero to reply fast.

“The Black Fox one. Here you have. I want to be like him when I grow up. Now can we read a bit and come back home, please? We didn’t have a good day today”. As if our other days were better.

They seem to approve. That’s what they expected, after all. The templar takes one of the thick tomes of the shelves and selects some of the less boring parts of the Chant of Light for us to practice. Then he makes us copy some of the lines, and finally reads aloud a paragraph we need to write down so he can check our orthography.

When we’re done, we come back to the orphanage, to the dull, empty room we share with three more girls who are always too shy and too afraid to speak to us.

We take turns to sleep in the upper bunk, even in that we like to tease the others so they are not sure who is who. Tonight is my turn. But before I blow the candle out, I take my small treasure from under the mattress. A book I took from a wealthy house we sneaked into some years ago. They had so many books I doubt they noticed one was missing.
When I took it, I couldn’t barely read yet. But a drawing in the cover caught my eye. A redhaired lady in a tower, with a long braid hanging down the window.

I remember I decided Eve and me should start styling our hair in a braid more or less by that time. Outside of the tower, on the floor, kneeling and offering her a rose, a handsome knight in shining armor. I used to imagine my own stories around that drawing, until I was able to read the text.

The title of the book was “Alindra and the soldier”.

Even if the story was a bit different from what I had imagined, it still moved my heart. The knight in shining armor was nothing but a plain soldier. His lady belonged to a different world, so he wasn’t allowed to be with her. And yet, he gave his life for her. And she waited for him forever in the sky.

Though in my mind, Alindra always climbed down the tower to meet her soldier and they ran away together while her father would yell and send his knights behind the couple. And they would live adventures in the woods forever, she with her flaming red braid behind, he with his shining armor.

Of course I would never say aloud that my favorite story is the one I imagined around an illustration for a love drama. No. Let’s them imagine I want to steal from the rich to give it to the poor… the poor being my sister and me.

But during the nights, when no one can see me, I still sneak out of my bed to look through the window… and check if Alindra’s star is today a bit closer to her soldier’s than yesterday. 



Evelyn Lyn belongs to Alexia Symeonidou (gwpe)
Ser August Hilaire belongs to  bucklesinthesun

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