A/N Check out the Morrowind theme/ rain remix for this chapters atmosphere. :] /watch?v=t60b0-gkPCY
Big thanks to AeonUS and to my flatmate who was forced to read this chapter. xD
Emptiness
It was silent. No singing bird, no rustling of the trees, not even the whisper of the wind could be heard. It was just silent. As if nothing and really nothing existed in this world. As if the world did not exist. Usually this nothingness was followed by a bang. A bang out of nowhere, and louder than everything before.
A bang and then another. An unstoppable roar that put you in fear and terror. It was so loud that you couldn't hear your own heartbeat, when before your heartbeat was the only thing you were able to hear.
There would be a thunderstorm followed by rain. Rain that washed away everything away that was loose. It washed away all the dirt of the world the people were wearing. All the worries and fears, all courage and joy. And when it had washed that away everything, only one thing remained: emptiness.
She felt this emptiness very often, if it was even anything that could be felt. Was it not rather like being swallowed by something? Or like your guts were being sucked out, like it was reputed to the pharaohs of the ancient Egypt, and being left as only an empty shell? She was weak like a bean without content. But where did the content go? Where did all the things you were before go, when you came to the point that you were so useless and meaningless to the world? What was feeding on the courage to face life, the easiness and power that once surrounded you? Was it the devil? Could it be that her life was already forfeited? Believing the church it was all wrong somehow anyway. But how could you even know whether you did something right or wrong, when god himself wasn't speaking to you and the priests dropped the word "sin" at least twice in a sentence? Wasn't everything a sin? Would that mean it was even sinful when she broke out of their daily life sometimes just to feel free? Would that mean that she sinned?
Someone called her name. At first it sounded very quiet but it became quickly louder until it tickled her ear. She shuddered inevitably. And the emptiness began to charge again slowly.
"Quinn!" The tone of the voice had become demanding. "There will be thunder any minute. Come back inside."
Quinn opened her eyes and looked into the face of a young, dark-haired girl. She had her arms crossed over her chest. Not because she was angry, but because she was shivering. Quinn raised her head slightly in order to see her better. She wore a knee-length dress that was made of dark green and blue plaid kilt. These were the colors of the Forbes clan. It was wrapped around the waist and held with a belt.
Before Quinn could say anything the girl raised her voice again.
"Plus, the grass is wet and when you catch a cold, then do not say that I did not warn you."
Quinn twisted his face into a grin.
"You're worried that I catch cold?" She said in an ironic tone.
For a second it looked as if she was going to fire something back, but then her features soften. She dropped her hands and replied:
"Of course I am."
"Help me up." Quinn snorted grinning and held out her arm. The girl stepped forward, grabbed Quinn's hand with both of her own and pulled her up. Quinn's upper body was not yet in an upright position as she covered the girl's arm quickly with her other hand and jerked at it hard, so she lost her balance and fell with a squeak. She let go of Quinn's hand and tried to support herself, but Quinn's arms slung around her hips and let her land in the arms of the blonde.
"Quinn," she tried to warn seriously but her voice sounded two octaves higher than usual. She tried to free herself from her grasp. But Quinn did not let go, only tightened her grip more. She giggled uncontrollably. It was so easy to bring her into a rage. And if Quinn had felt so heavy and empty before, she was now so much lighter inside.
The girl sighed and finally gave up the defense. She looked at Quinn, who saw only her blurred as the laughter had driven her to tears. She pinched them together, but the laughter did not die down. And then she felt the body beginning to twitch lightly and seconds later, a soft laughter came to her ears, which was as hearty as her own. It was as if it spread heat on Quinn's skin. A warm tingling on a cold day.
As both their laughter died down, Quinn opened her eyes and gazed into hazelnut ones only a few inches above her. They grinned at each other. The corner of the girl's mouth twitched a little and then she sighed quietly and leaned over Quinn. Quinn squinted her eyes again and took a hasty breath. Her arms just hung loosely at the brunettes back. Soft lips met Quinn's forehead before she raised her body and rolled onto the grass beside her. For a while they lay in silence. It was not an empty silence, Quinn thought for herself. She could hear her own pulse beat a little faster than before and she could hear the breathing of the girl, as it went along with hers. Again it was the little brunette who began to speak first:
"Quinn?"
Quinn turned to face her.
"Rachel?"
Rachel examined her with a look that was both fascinating and indefinable. As if she tried to read what was written in her head. Quinn found at that moment, however, that there was nothing written at all.
"Quinn ... why are you so crestfallen?"
Damn. Of all the things she could have said, why did she have to ask just that question? If the words had not been so striking for Quinn, she would have never heard what she had even whispered.
"I am not." She answered quickly. "At least not when I'm here. I love being with you, you know that."
Rachel nodded, but she did not look convinced. She frowned, thinking. Quinn continued to hastily:
"You know I just think about having to return again soon and that makes me sad. I hate it there. I don't think it's where my heart is. If there was a place my heart is at home, it would be here. With you. And with Puck. "
That was only half of the truth. In fact, she hated her family and for some reason she hated her parents. Especially her father. He was a tall man with wide shoulders and blond hair as blond as her own. He had the nicest smile on earth, but it was only a facade. Because her father was a liar.
He had raised his daughters with an iron fist, but also he had allowed them a lot. The family had money and could afford reading, writing or riding lessons. Day after day he had told them how much they meant to him as daughters and how he imagined a perfectly happy life for them. Whenever they went across the street he had shown them how to distinguish the good people from the bad. Sinful from honest, addicts from celibates and smart people from fools. Her father was a preacher. He loved to be right and to tell people off whenever he had the chance. He did it so often at the court of the Stewart-family, where her family lived. Quinn believed him the devotion with which he sent them to the Holy Mass on Sunday, but she also knew that he was a liar. A damn liar. It had happened so many times that Quinn, returning from nightly excursions, squeezed through the small kitchen window that was never properly locked; she saw her father standing in the pantry next to her, ramming the house maid from behind against one of the giant cheese wheels. Since the door didn't usually close properly, Quinn remained silent in the shadow of the utility cabinet and covered her ears. Moonlight shone through the slightly opened window shutters and up to the point where the moving bodys cast long shadows against the wall. Quinn felt uncomfortable and disgusted by the spectacle, yet it was somehow fascinating at the same time. And she thought that those movements made probably the most sense but she wondered why people made sounds like pigs that were stabbed to death. By the years Quinn no longer waited for her father Russell and the maid to leave the kitchen; instead she quietly climbed out the window again and up onto one of the trees behind the house, from where she could reach the maids room. No one was in there who could catch her, so she just slipped through the window and reached her own room unseen.
Yes, Quinn had never loved her home. Instead she enjoyed going to the Berry's and the Bannerman's where she felt comfortable and she knew that people truly cared for. Quinn and Rachel had met years ago at the Highland Games in Braemar and were best friends ever since. But even this place was no longer the same anymore recently. Not since "he" was there.
A roar shook the sky. Rachel and Quinn startled and leapt nimbly to their feet.
"Come on," she exclaimed grabbing Quinn by the wrist and pulling her after her, always downstream in the direction of the green hill.
The rain pattered loudly and incessantly from the sky onto the roof of the narrow, but very spacious house. The two girls had made it home in time before the crashing storm that had swept over them, accompanied by heavy rainfall. Now they were sitting at an equally elongated, massive wooden table on just as solid wooden stools. The other side of the living room showed a small fireplace with a big kettle hanging in the middle. Hot stew of brown-green color bubbled along. A man with brown hair and homely figure bent over and filled four bowls with the thick, hot porridge. Another man in a white shirt and dark green kilt came straight from the bedrooms towards them.
"Leroy." He said cheerfully, walking towards the other man. When he saw the two girls, he changed his course and nodded in relief.
"Rachel, Quinn. I'm glad that you didn't get into the storm." Scratching his beard he sat down next to his daughter.
"Well," said Rachel. "Actually I had been here already, waiting for Finn, but when I couldn't find Quinn anywhere and I went out again to look for her."
The man eyed Quinn questioning and she shrugged her shoulders.
"Were you brought her or have you come by your own?"
He addressed the question directly to Quinn.
"Would it not be better if someone takes you home tonight? It's already quite late."
"No." she replied simply. The carriage always took so long. She was much faster when she rode. But of course no one liked to see a young noblewoman riding a horse alone and without any male accompanist. Therefore, Quinn often just snuck out without saying where she would go. Her parents had long given up trying to exorcise that out of Quinn anyway. Quinn had always been very small and nimble. Whenever they discovered her hiding places, she was still fast enough to escape. She could run zig-zag like a rabbit on the run. She did not care that the people around her condemned her behavior as not very ladylike.
Leroy served the stew, casting a sidelong glance at Quinn and added as if he knew exactly what she was thinking:
"You know, maybe Hiram is right. It is not because you should not ride, but no one should do it so late in the evening when it's dark. It can be dangerous for horse and rider."
Quinn thought about it for a moment but however rejected Leroy's idea. Of course it was dangerous at night. There could be wolves, bandits, and above all, there was no light, so you could accidentally turn into wrong directions and get lost somewhere in the woods. But Quinn knew the way better than anything else, as often as she had already ridden here. Apart from that it happened that she didn't care much. What or who would care if she died tonight? Not even God would shed a tear. Well maybe Puck. Yes, Puck would be sad. And Rachel. But Rachel didn't need to be sad, because she now had something that made her happy, so much happier than it was ever possible for Quinn to make her.
She took the spoon and began to eat the porridge. It mainly tasted like millet and cabbage, but it probably contained all the last weeks left overs. Normally, she could not stand this thick stew, but the Berry's one was quite all right.
Hiram and Leroy were Rachel's foster fathers. They worked together as timbermen, a well-respected profession in Scotland. If they weren't able to purchase raw wood at lower prices, they would never be able to afford the big wooden table.
Quinn didn't know more about Rachel's family background than the fact that her mother had probably died in childbirth. It was a rare thing that two men lived together and even rarer; together with a child. It was often the case that monks and nuns were bringing children up in cloistral environments. And exactly that could have happened to Rachel as well, but Hiram and Leroy enjoyed a good reputation in their area and apparently knew the mother, so they could be entrusted with the task to raise the child on their own request. The Berrys were not religious, at least not belonging to the Christian belief. It was not a great rarity that people in the Highlands were not paying much attention to faith. They lived in wilderness and enjoyed the pleasure of the hunt, games and fighting and they found no big importance in caring about certain believes. But in the bigger towns of the south, people like the Berrys would probably have more problems with these rough and rather primitive attitudes, not to mention the fact that they raised a child outside the monastic environment. But here up north no one really cared. And as long as the Berrys had no enemies, no one would even get the idea of accusing them of an impious or witch generic lifestyle.
A few minutes later, after the four had taken seats at the table and begun to eat, the front door suddenly opened and two young men appeared in the threshold. They were soaked to the bones, their kilts clung tightly onto their skin and their hair stood up in a weird angle when they let down their hoods. From her hands dangled something that looked pretty similar to dead birds, and those were pretty much as wet as the boys. The smaller of the two lads made a step forward and shook his long dark brown mane, spilling water in all directions. The upper hair was shorter than his hair at the back which was tied together to a pony tail. The sides of the head were shaved. It looked pretty wild. His name was Noah Bannerman, but he called himself for fun Puckerman, as he saw himself as a troublemaker and liked this nickname better than his actual name. Of this only Puck remained, and that was how most of the people called him now. The other boy's name was Finnlay. He was very tall and had long, lanky arms that, if he wasn't careful, could be very clumsy. His hair was dark and much shorter than Puck's and under his thick eyebrows he carried a rather dumb expression. He was born of the house Hudson and like the rest of his family not the smartest. Just as stupid as his grimaces was most of how he acted. For Quinn anyway, because she had seen him staring at empty walls for hours as well as praying to some food god while gazing at an old goat cheese. Finn was Rachel's fiancé. And Quinn had absolutely no idea what she loved about him so much.
Finn stepped forward and held the shot pigeon up in the air.
"I brought us dinner." He exclaimed proudly, and then turned to Rachel, to kiss her hello. Rachel did not resist, but did her best to stay away from the dead animal that he still held in his hand.
"I've shot the pigeon only for you." Finn explained, apparently not realising how much Rachel was grossed out by the bird. The girl eyed the animal with a disgusted look while a mixture of blood and rain dripped out between its feathers to the floor.
"You do know that I don't eat meat, don't you?" She replied carefully trying to keep her tone as low as she could.
Finn seemed to take a minute to think through this information. Behind his squinted eyebrows Quinn could see ten farmers trying to cut a tree.
"But pigeons are birds right...?" he finally said, confused about which animals belonged to meat and which were not. There was one moment of silence. Then:
"But you did it for me." Rachel added beaming, took Finn's hand quickly and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."
He seemed to be more than satisfied with this answer as he returned her kiss with a proud smile and leaned down into her to kiss her on the lips once more.
It was about time to go, Quinn thought, suddenly feeling sick. It was getting late anyway, and she really couldn't cope with Finn's stupid affectionate flannel in this moment. She took the last spoonful of soup, shoved it into her mouth and stood up.
"I just remembered that I have to hurry. My father expects me to help him tomorrow morning ... uh ...," She remembered nothing suitable for the rest of the sentence. But didn't Matthew mention that someone would come to visit tomorrow?
"My father expects me to help Matthew tomorrow to welcome his guests."
She didn't care if she was lying. All she wanted was just to go home. Again there was this numb feeling climbing up her throat. She was so useless and left out whenever Finn was with Rachel and her. It was nice to be with Puck and it was nice to be with Rachel., or at least with Puck and Rachel together. But whenever Finn was around everything seemed different and it felt terrible. Hiram patted her on the shoulder.
"You should get home as soon as possible." He said. Leroy nodded agreeing. Rachel freed herself from Finn's embrace, stood up and wrapped her arms around Quinn. "Until next time, okay? Take care. "
Quinn turned around, grabbed her long coat that hung next to the door and threw it over her shoulders. She waved the family and was just about to leave through the door, when a hand held her back. Puck had taken her by the wrist and pulled her back a bit.
"I'll walk with you for a bit if I may?"
Quinn nodded in agreement and smiled a little.
A few minutes later, the two were in the saddle of their horses and rode down the green hill. Quinn was sitting on Thistle, her grey Barb, that she loved more than anything. The horse was 9 years old and it was everything to her. Besides Rachel and Puck, she would say Thistle was her third best friend. She got him for her birthday when she was twelve and since then, the two had been best friends. He let himself ride well and obeyed to the smallest assistance. She knew that he had probably cost the family a lot.
Pucks pony trotted beside her and tried its best to keep up the pace. Puck was not a very good rider and usually preferred it to walk, but for Quinn he took riding upon himself, and it made her happy, that she was him worth so much. Puck accompanied her often on the way back home. He usually rode half the distance with her, until she reached the paved road that connected Perthshire with Stirlingshire.
"Hey," Puck said after a moment of silence. His voice was soft and reflective, quite different than usual. Oh please, let him not mention that she was behaving kind of strange lately.
"I know that you're not very thrilled about Rachel and Finn's engagement." He began. "Honestly, I think it's a bit mean to end the thing with you and then, just a short time later, ask for Rachel's hand in marriage. I mean, are you and Rachel's best friends, and I can understand that you think it was not a smart move of him."
Puck spurred his pony, and catched up. Thistle was, unlike him, a powerful breed with much stamina. It's origins came from the eastern continent, the land of the dessert which was famous for light riding horses.
'I just think he has fallen for her so hard."
"I couldn't care less about him." Quinn hissed and urged Thistle to go faster; it let a groan escape Puck's mouth and encouraging his pony to speed up.
"Wait, so you're not mad at Finn for leaving you?"
Quinn growled: "No, I'm not mad about it. I'm just mad about the fact that he is a total idiot, and doesn't deserve Rachel at all, because he is so incredibly stupid."
"But ... why?"
Quinn snorted and Thistle did the same. They rode in silence for a while. Puck's expressions were thoughtful and confused, while Quinn was trying to get rid of the swirl of thoughts that fluttered into her head. Why did he think she was angry that Finn had left her for Rachel? Did she really look as unhappy as she felt? Finn was a fool. He didn't deserve her. She should have someone better ... she should have someone who was smart, and who truly loved her. She could imagine someone who fulfilled these conditions, but it was a hopeless battle, she had given up long ago. Still, she could not help herself. Being together with her filled her with so much joy and with incredible pain at the same time.
"It doesn't matter anymore ..." Quinn finally answered quietly.
Puck gave her a warm smile back. He probably did not understand what was happening to her, but even if he did, it wouldn't matter. Puck understood, even if Quinn left his questions unanswered. He let her be, never forced anything out of her. She could trust him and rely on him. That was one of the things she appreciated about him.
Puck just nodded, his gaze wandering over the endless moorland of Glenshee.
"Okay."
As Quinn reached her home in Broad Street, it was already at dawn. A gentle, rosy veil appeared on the horizon, yet it would still take a few hours until it was really light. Quinn led Thistle to the barn, unsaddled him and rubbed his fur dry. He snorted patiently. She patted his back and breathed in the reassuring smell of the stable. It always gave her some sort of peace. Across from her she spotted a carriage that Quinn that she had never seen before. So the house actually got visitors overnight. Two brown horses stood in one of the double boxes for guest horses. They were asleep.
"Hey Thistle," Quinn breathed in her horses ear. "Time to sleep. I'm sorry that we had to ride all night. Tomorrow is your day off. "
Thistle snorted and nibbled gently on her arm.
Quinn led her horse into the box and left the stables. When she unlocked the front door she almost collided with Alison the house maiden who was sweeping the floor of the entrance.
"What have you been up to?" It escaped both of them almost simultaneously. Quinn's face pulled into a devilish grin.
"I was visiting a friend. But what are you doing here at this hour? "
Quinn's smile got even wider and made Alison return her a confused look. She was new and worked here only since last month.
"I've got to prepare the breakfast. The cock crows soon and we have important guests Sir Matthew will meet tomorrow. Why do you ask?"
"Oh ..." said Quinn making a gesture with her hand that meant it didn't matter, but she could not suppress a sardonic grin. It would be exciting to watch Alison in the near future. At the moment she seemed motivated to perform her work in all conscience. Oh, but she had no idea ...
Quinn stepped through the door, past Alison and upstairs towards her room.
"For absolutely no reason..."
a/n Chapter 3 is already on its way. Quinn and Brittany will meet the first time.
