As many of the things which I have yet to put onto FFN, this was a creative writing assignment. To those who have read Kay, it may be a little predictable, but it was in a day of surprising uninventiveness. The assignment was to write about the perfect snow day, fictional or nonfictional; here was my interpretation. There is no pairing, this is set before construction was completed on the operahouse.
Disclaimer:
I have a character on Furcadia named Erik of Shadows, but he is no more legally mine than anything else in Phantom.
The heater had gone out. This was a common enough occurrence when I sent my rat-catcher contraption along his rounds of the cellars, but I had not, and therefore I awoke to the intolerable subterranean chill of winter.
It was not exactly a cheery time, for the Prussians had planned their attacks with a marvelous insight. In most circles, food was running low, and people in the world above had taken to butchering the animals in the zoo – even horses and cats—for meat. I myself was repulsed by the prospect, though I cannot say I had anything more than anyone else. It was, in the end and ironically, the morphine which kept me alive, miraculously suppressing my appetite and without food quelling the nightmares that had haunted me since boyhood. But that day, I knew I would have to venture above. My supplies were running low.
At first I was surprised. For the past few months the weather had been miserably wet and foggy, a fitting atmosphere only broken by the occasional black smoke of fires. Not as I locked the secret gate to the Rue Scribe entrance of my little lake, the snow was ankle deep and, to my further shock, cheerily blowing to the extent that it actually lifted my spirits. I had always enjoyed the first snow, something dreadfully lacking back in Persian, and though it might have snowed all week and I had merely missed it below the ground, this first snow was mine.
I was shocked and delighted, finding the streets totally empty. Although I had no idea why, I had a feeling that the causes were benign, and so I kicked up my heels and turned to the market. It was the first time I felt at peace with, even amiable to this snow-struck world for many years, and perhaps the first time since I was five. The Rosy Hours, I regret, were so clouded in the haze of opium and hashish that I do not rightly know if they were host to my own enjoyment at all. But this was, and as I stated that fact in my mind it became more real. There were only empty streets! No people! How many times had I dreamed this? And now--!
The jovial cry that escaped into the frosty air made me, myself, freeze as well as the forming icicles. Had that been me? There was no-one else in the empty market, after all… I believe at that moment, with such mouth as I have, I smiled. I—I! I smiled.
As, strolling through the abandoned stalls as if I were a normal shopper, a seller, an owner, a man, I heard the distant jolly call of church bells. Of course; how could I have not realized? It was Christmas.
Although I had not celebrated since my ninth year, and certainly never believed in any of it after I was five years old, I was familiar with the customs. I had never bothered in deceiving myself about Father Christmas, for my mother – poor woman – had never bothered to deceive me. So it was that I had never in my life received a Christmas present, and never expected to, either. Yet it seemed that day that a brief few hours of peace were gift enough, and more than I ever had dared to wish for.
Later that day, my purchases – a few vials of morphine and two rather stale baguettes – tucked within one of many compartments of my long opera cloak, I felt perhaps less jolly. The moment Christmas Mass cleared out, I was met with the usual stares, the usual price changes upon the vision of my pallid mask, and yet I had the wholly unusual memory of the morning to sustain me. As the sun sank sleepily behind the horizon, I stood on a bridge near the Rue de St. Honore and watched the ice flow in chunks down the brook. I heard a prostitute nearby hail a passing soldier: "I will take you to my room for a piece of bread." I did not hear the reply, but they soon left, arm in arm.
At once the depression I had miraculously shaken off settled its weight upon my cloaked shoulders. How hungry would a woman have to be…? The rest needed not be thought, let alone written. Abruptly I moved, to return to my lair and lost these lustful thoughts of starving women, and taking the alleyways to avoid the crowds that caroled against the odds. There I found a greater surprise. A very hungry little lady.
It was a kitten, not five weeks old, mewling and scratching with starving want at my cloak, big eyes like ice-chips fixed in a pathetic plea for food. I bent, silent, and gently took her up in my silk-gloved hand. She fit in even my thin palm… At once, all the bitter feelings I had held towards the world and its wonders melted away, and instead arose paternal instinct. I didn't know I had them, really… I tucked her into my cloak, safely, and returned to the world below. For the second time that day, shakily, I smiled.
I had been given a Christmas present, and I exchanged one as well… I had saved Ayesha, as I now dubbed her, from a death too horrible to dwell upon; to be eaten by that despicable race which I had ceased to believe myself a part of. In return I received a friend. Only one before could hold that claim…
I never did take my morphine that night. I spent the time until the morning taking my little lady around so that she might learn to avoid my traps and to harvest her food with the secret of the rat-catcher. My joy was cinched when I returned to the house on the lake and discovered, to my joy and to the kitten's –
The heat had come back on.
Well? Comments? Criticism? Coffee? No, skip it... I don't like coffee.