Misfit
Chapter 2: Background Character
Please alert me to any tense mistakes or inconsistencies you see. I've done the best I can in making it sound smooth, however.
Master comes in through the portal later that day to find the skinny boy cross-legged on the fur rug eating crumpet after crumpet and licking jam from his fingers.
Noticing him, the kid still manages to compose himself excellently, getting to his feet and standing smartly, despite the crumbs clinging to his tattered tunic.
Immediately after his visual appraisal of the kid, he tears into Witch.
"Did you let him in?"
"No, sir! I don't know how he got in.
I thought... you already knew about him."
She stands in front of the boy, slightly taller, much better fed.
Master turns to face the kid then, and, more gently than Witch had ever seen him, asks,
"How'd you get in here, boy?"
Looking him dead in the eyes (Witch could never manage such a feat), the nameless street kid answers quietly.
"I was hungry. I went in to see if you had something for me to eat."
"Wasn't the door heavy, son?"
Master squats down to his level, and Witch is embarrassed for him, that he has to stoop to speak to that urchin.
Kids like him are a penny a pop. They roam the streets like animals, and like dogs they form packs in the evenings to sleep, staring up at pedestrians, their sad, sunken eyes watching the world bustle past.
"Not at all. There was some sort of warm tingling wall- like the waterfall at the creek, but I guess I got through." He hardly moves his jam-sticky mouth when he speaks.
Master rocks back on his boot-heels.
"You gotta family? Place to live?"
Somehow the kid looks even scrawnier, smaller, though his composed expression remains the same. He shakes his head and drops his eyes for the first time.
"You go on upstairs and pick any room you like. Witch, show him around."
She stands there, trying to digest it all. Within her balled fists, her fingernails dig into her palms.
She can't bring herself to say anything, and instead nods dumbly, astounded.
She stubbornly rejects the ridiculous notion that some kid from the street, age ten or under, could break through such high-level barriers and wards simply because he was hungry.
But, then, the brat just has to be something else. Witch knows Master is very good at sensing the potential in people, and he must have seen something absolutely otherworldly in the little rat to take him under his wing.
She grasps his bony arm and leads him to the hallway, and then to the stairwell. He follows behind passively, blinking at the hangings and exotic tapestries on the cold rock walls. His bare feet are almost silent on the floor-mats, though he surely feels the cold stone underneath.
He hesitates a bit as they travel the long, curving corridor, passing library after library, and stops fully in front of the room where Master grows his healing herbs and potion ingredients.
Witch isn't allowed in that room, and yanks on his elbow to get him moving, but he resists, makes a face, and brushes her hands off, tentatively padding in despite her warnings.
Nervously, she starts to sweat, and begins picking at her cuticles. Master was probably watching them now.
He just stands there with his mouth open, in the middle of the room, staring up at the afternoon sky through the misty glass on the walls and ceiling.
Pots of clay and brass line the walls, angled to catch every last patch of sun. Stout plants with broad stems and huge, gaudy flowers cradle droplets of water in their curved, waxy leaves, alongside rows of carefully labeled glass jars in which tiny, tender green-white sprouts are just beginning to unfurl out of the soil.
Jewel-like Vials and jars of unnamable powders, liquids, and creams are stacked with care on a shelf dominating one wall. The light catches the glass of the containers and projects shapes made of light in china blue, sunset red, grass green, and regal purple on the floor. Next to the shelves, a workbench is stacked with dirty tools and folded cloth and paper seed packs.
Taking up a large portion of the room, inarguably the most noticeable feature, is a strange system fused to the walls. It is composed of a network of pipes attached to a strange deep tank-like depression in the ceiling that is about a quarter full of greenish water.
The pipes feed downward into narrow straws, which are controlled by a large tap and connected to several troughs filled with soil and sprouting plants.
Witch peeks in, anxious. She has bitten her cuticles to ribbons and her fingers have started to bleed a bit.
"Don't you dare touch the rain collector!"
The kid has never seen anything even remotely close to this, and draws back his hand.
He finds the whole experience very overwhelming. This was one room out of hundreds. How many more wonders did the Master keep hidden in the castle?
"Come on already..."
She will not get in trouble just because the little worm had to stop and gawk at all the forbidden rooms.
He begins to slowly step out of the plant room, much to her relief.
They continue along the candlelit hallway until they reach the wing that contains the living quarters.
There, another huge hallway stretches out before them, on one wall an army of doors, each painted a different colour, with a different pattern.
On the other wall is a huge, fading mural of a tall, stately woman with green hair and wings like a dragonfly's embracing an enormous glowing tree.
This hall has no windows, and is always cool and dark.
Witch turns to him, sees the almost nostalgic expression on his rough, dirty face, and explains a bit uncomfortably that the purple door with the flowery pattern is hers and the plain black one is Master's.
"And you can't ever go in there without his permission. Choose whatever colour door you want. I don't really know what's behind them."
He paces down the hall, up and down, looking for one he really likes.
Witch, having ignored her bloody nails for too long, occupies herself with wiping the crust off on her sleeve.
She watches, bored, as he stops three times, once in front of a gray door with a swirling pattern suggesting rainclouds, then a green one with leaves on it, and finally, a darker blue door portraying a painted moon and stars.
He decides on the blue one, and turns the knob. She follows him into the room, driven more by curiosity than the desire to help him settle in.
Witch is disappointed. She was expecting something different behind every door, but his room is remarkably similar to her own, only plainer, devoid of any character.
The kid, on the other hand, is in total awe of all he has been offered.
Not only is there a roof that doesn't leak over his head, there is a soft bed with blue blankets, a closet already filled with clothes, and his very own fireplace!
There is also an empty bookcase near the only window, and a new bottle of ink, a quill pen, and a neat stack of blank parchment atop a wooden desk.
Witch decides to leave him then, giving him rough directions to the privy and the bathing-chamber and the dining hall, where a meal would be served in an hour.
What did she care if he got lost on the way?
I'm almost thankful neither of them discuss their origins too deeply in-game. Doesn't really give me any guidelines to go by, but doesn't restrict me either. What do you think of it so far? Questions? I mean, I certainly can't answer ones about future chapters for fear of spoiling the surprise, but I'd love to hear them anyway.
I should be updating this one fairly frequently. Also, it was late at night when I wrote the first chapter, so please kindly overlook the stupid note in which I restrict the chapters to 700 words. I've removed it.
Thank you for your feedback!
