Title: Weathered Stone.
Author: nocturnal messages
Summary: Rosetta and Zavier face off in a battle of wits and perverted innuendos! Who will prevail?
By the time Rosetta blazed her hellbent course back through main street she was amazed her thundering warpath had yet to erode the mossy flagstones to dust. She was mustering the fury of a battalion, distilled in the guise of a merchant's daughter to lay siege to the inn harboring a hapless boy who with one glance had stripped her further than nudity, had exposed the fathomless depths of her insecurities.
Generally, Lady Ann's Inn functioned as a careworn asylum for the chronically degenerate. The fact that Lukas resided as a tenant on the ground floor already condemned the otherwise rustically charming building to unlivable status.
That being said, she still felt a pang of regret as she flung the door open and stormed past the foyer, nearly flattening the staircase in her hasty ascent. Rounding the L-shaped bend of the mid-floor landing, her fingers flitted up the banister, pitching forward as she about trampled the person kneeling on the top stair.
Hatred shone in her eyes like liquid bronze, suffused by the fervid light cutting through the stairwell windows. "Where is that son of a bi-" Her tongue ceased of its own accord, evidently applying some latent form of self-preservation. "Of a beautiful, benevolent.. buxomly woman." One hand seized the railing while the other gestured what she hoped was a universal sign for surrender.
Lady Ann rose to her feet, a curtain of brown hair eclipsing her face. Rosetta's expression grew solemn and she edged her left foot down a tread-level, bracing herself for the wrath of a single-mother who had survived the rearing of that hellspawn. "Don't kill me, I have foes in high places.." she stammered, for fear that if she didn't speak, the muscles in her face would freeze to stone before this Gorgon-woman. Her mind drowned in a flood of curses: Damn it Rosetta! Foes in high places? Holy hell, are you kidding me! Well, I suppose Zavier counts.. He is on the second story.
Carelessly flicking her hair back, the innkeeper wrung muddy water from a threadbare rag into a bucket that spat droplets back at her bare arms. "Ha ha! Kill you?" Lady Ann laughed. "No, I won't be doing that. Not after I spent the last half-hour on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor." She flourished the tattered rag. Rosetta was reminded of a slice of moldy swiss cheese she once discovered behind a crate in the cellar. Not even the rats would touch it. "That boy came streaking in here, all of butt-naked, leaving muddy prints on my pristine floor.."
"Oh, yeah, some people are just shameless," Rosetta chided in turn, knowing full well she had just tracked in half the beach with her. "So where's Zavier?" She stretched both arms around either banister in a shift to block the sandy footprints smeared across every third stair.
"Follow the mud trail," Ann supplied with a weary motion of her hand. Rosetta nodded and wended around the woman to the second story landing. "Oh, and try not to mention Mist. He seems kind of glum. I think he might have finally worked up the courage to.. You know, rejection is heartbreaking."
She marched up the corridor, duly following the trail of mixed sludge and detritus. Disgusting, he's like a snail.. The consequent thought that she hadn't any salt in her arsenal brushed through her mind as she veered toward the end of the hall. The knob clicked ineffectually in its lock.
"Zavier! Open the door!" She trounced the wood panels with a series of kicks aimed exactly at groin-level in case he was actually foolish enough to obey.
"NO!"
"I just want to talk, really!" Another kick rattled the cedar door.
"Go away!"
"Fine," she said, pivoting on her heel. "I guess I'll just go back to bathing in the hot springs. Where a lonely and vulnerable Mist lies in wait. But don't worry, I'll clean her up for you afterwards."
Straightaway, he snapped up the bait, wrenching the door open to throttle her neck in a headlock. "Keep your dirty paws off her, Rosetta!"
"Keep your dirty hands off me," she gasped indignantly, thrusting her elbow into the side of his head. They reeled back into his room and she tore from his grasp, throwing all her weight at the door. It slammed shut. She spun around, dragging in deep breaths that tasted like pennies and the fetid air. He was doubled over, seething air and kneading his left temple vigorously beneath the upended flap of his leather helmet. Thankfully he had redressed himself before locking her in a choke-hold. Undoubtedly within the lapse of time during her pretended disclosure about returning to finish where she had left off with Mist, judging by the fact that he was wearing his trousers inside-out.
Rosetta rested against the door post, her arm twisted behind her back as she cradled the door knob in her hand. "Look, I don't know what you saw, but.."
He shot her a look that would have been intimidating if not for the tears standing in his eyes. "I saw you practically swallow Mist's head with your gaping whale-mouth!"
She scratched her collarbone idly and feigned innocence. "But, we were just practicing, er.. mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."
"You're so lying! I heard you both talking and the last thing Mist said was: 'Hm? Is there something on my face?', after you finished scrubbing her back. Meaning you were supposed to be cleaning her face, but instead took advantage of her while she was unawares by trying to.. to kiss her!" he sputtered, a deep flush pouring crimson down his neck.
"I was just being thorough!" she protested.
He struck his foot against the floorboards. A tower of dirty plates and cups stacked in alternating layers swayed precariously. "By probing the inside of her mouth? It's all in the transcript, Rosetta. And the verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty. Sentenced to a hundred years in the stocks!"
She prayed the anxiety wouldn't bleed through her baleful glare. He held her future in his grimy hands. Behavior of the sort he had witnessed wasn't expressly forbidden in the realm of Norad, not like the Sechs Empire where so much as a handshake between two women was grounds for exile. Yet, it was borderline lewd, and her father already firmly objected against her getting married. If word got out, that would be the final bit of incentive he needed to ship her off to a convent, and she would never survive inside one of those sanctified soul-crushing factories. She had seen what it had done to Lara.
Slight humility, now or never.. "What do you want?" she asked.
Zavier smirked, waving her toward a refuse heap in the corner. "There's a list of demands on my desk." She forded the shallow end of the junk strewn about his floor, resigned to the fact that she had probably contracted tetanus by now.
Once she had settled herself in the chair before his writing desk and excavated the list from a pile of clothing (to her dismay the bulk of the articles were dank socks) and sketches of Mist that contained anatomically impossible bust-to-body ratios, he began ticking off the laundry list of items on his fingers: "First, I want you to stay at least fifty feet away from Mist at all times." Already on her agenda.
"Second, I want a life-time supply of cornflakes." Easy, that amount reckoned out to about half a cornflake at this point.
"Third, I want you to write and perform a puppet show for me daily, but it has to have at least three puppets on stage at all time, don't be afraid to use your feet. Oh, and it needs to have an over-arching plot but each episode must be able to stand alone. And it has to star me and Mist. I'll graciously allow you to be within fifty feet of puppet-Mist." Excellent, she could already tell this was going to be her magnum opus.
"Finally, I want you to tell me.. does her carpet match the drapes?"
Rosetta's brow shot up and she mouthed an incredulous "What?" before resuming her deadpan expression. "..I believe she has wood floors."
Wiping his lips with the flat of his hand, Zavier flopped onto his bed and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "What I mean is.. Ugh, never mind!" He changed tack, marginally, "At least tell me what color her underwear is."
She bowed her head in her arms. Her heart beat in triple tempo. Extended conversations with Zavier always gave her visible migraines. "What makes you think she wears any? She already dresses like a total slut," she grumbled.
The trestle bed strained as her insult to his beloved Mist jolted him into action. "Hey, at least she's not ashamed of who she is! In fact, she flaunts it. You're just jealous 'cause you look like your mom still dresses you."
A numbing cold washed over her, followed by an intense flash of heat. "My mother is dead."
"Did you inherit her wardrobe?" Zavier provoked.
"Shut up." Her vision scoped, all she saw was Zavier and his mocking grin. She couldn't remember when she had stood up.
"Well, I mean, if she's dead then it doesn't matter.."
She dove across the room, shoving his neck to wall under her arm, the back of his head banging against the wood with a sound like an egg cracking. "Bastard, shut up! Shut up, you piece of trash!" Her arm drew back, rearing to pound him into oblivion.
"R-rosetta, stop.." Something tickled the back of her neck and she turned, her eyes trailing up a pink sleeve to Tori's fear-stricken face. In that instant her courage dissolved.
"You're lucky your Tori ex machina arrived," she muttered, releasing him.
"I'd rather be lucky than get punched in the face!" he declared in a sing-song voice, grinning famously.
Tori worked her sleeve through her fingers, smoothening out the wrinkles, her voice softer than the silken fabric, "I heard you fighting.. like children.. It's embarrassing Zavier. ..Don't you care? What if the other people in the inn can hear you?"
His chest puffed up to maximum audacity. "Fuck the other people in the inn!" he bellowed. "She attacked me," he accused, pointing a finger at Rosetta's face that was promptly swatted away. "If you hadn't heard, she might've killed me. She can't be trusted, I saw her in the bath kissing Mist."
All eyes on her, Rosetta thrust her hands up in the air beseechingly. "It's not my fault! Look, today in the chapel she gave me the white stone and since I've been.. well, as pathetic as Zavier."
"Hey, don't compare my pure love to the acts of a bath-house pervert!" he shot back.
"It's not me, it's this damned cursed stone." She fished through her pocket and flourished the stone with a grimace. "Ever since she gave it to me, every time I'm around her.. I can't stop myself, I turn into a Mist-crazed loon."
"That's.. so romantic," Tori gushed, eyes practically bleeding rainbows.
Zavier had a different opinion. "You're so full of shit."
Blond braid threshing the air as she shook her head, Tori stammered, "N-no.. It's true. I.. read about it.. in a book from the library. H-hold on, please." Without further explanation, the assistant librarian left the room. The door to the next room over creaked open hesitantly and a sound like a wall of books toppling made Rosetta wince.
"What's a library?" Zavier asked, scratching the lump now protruding from where his head had smacked the wall.
Rosetta gazed at him in wonder. Perhaps the blow to his head had killed all two of his brain cells. "It's like a prison for books," she explained wanly.
Tori returned, nose carving the pages of a ponderous treatise appropriately titled: 'The History of Rocks'. "Here," she said, her meek voice framing a fluid summary from snippets out of the passage, "The White Stone.. imbued with passion's flame, smooth as a newborn babe, yet unyielding as adamantine ingots. Bestowed as a gift, it binds as one the hearts of lovers."
A whistle sliced through the heavy silence that followed. "Wow," Zavier said, "So, what d'you supposed would happen if three people shared it?" Swooping forward like a lovestruck vulture, he made a snatch for the stone and Rosetta recoiled, pressing it to her chest in absolute horror. She knew that was the one place in the world he would never dare to venture.
"No, idiot! It'll make you fall for me. Anyway, the closest you're ever getting to a romantic relationship with Mist are the bushes outside her bedroom window!" she taunted.
He gasped. "How do you know about the bushes!"
Behind her aggravated face-palm she descried Tori's tentative face, trembling as though about to burst. "I.. I think it's impossible for either of you.. I mean, it's just my opinion, but.. the chances of either of you marrying Mist are.. well.. there are none." She set the book on the bed and crawled onto the mattress, cupping their shoulders with hands that shook despite their warmth. "I.. I'm so sorry, Zavier. You're the son of an innkeeper.. and Rosetta, your father.." Rosetta caught the girl's gravely apologetic glance and nodded, shrugging off the hand on her shoulder so that she could grab it in her own, tacitly assuring Tori that she already knew and was fine. Perfectly peachy. "And.. well.. Mist is a peasant farmer.. a serf. Mom would never allow a marriage.. Maybe in a fairy tale it would work.. but never in real life."
Zavier punched his fist into a pillow wrathfully. "So what! Then I'll just have to elope with her!"
"Great, I'll hold the ladder," Rosetta offered.
"But she lives in a one-story house."
"Fine, the stepladder then. Don't take it literally.."
Tori giggled, suppressing her grin behind the folds of her dress. "Actually.. it's probably more likely.. that you two will be married.. our parents are on good terms and it is the best match available.. the innkeeper's son and merchant's daughter. So it won't do any good for you.. to ruin the reputation of your future wife, Zavier."
She could feel the shock manifesting as a silent scream on her face before swiveling her head to glance at Zavier. But the boy was already bounding across the bed toward an open window above his overturned dresser. "No!" he shrieked. "I'd rather die!" He straddled the sill, ducking his head out, the breeze fluttering at his tawny hair and stripping off his helmet before two pairs of arms pulled him kicking and screaming to the floor of his bedroom.
"Are you sure he's going to be.." Rosetta twirled her hand for lack of words. Words of concern for Zavier simply didn't exist in her vocabulary.
Tori glanced back at the bound and gagged form of her brother, the chair he was tied to falling over with a crash as he struggled and squirmed for the window. "Yes.. Don't worry, he used to try this every week on bath-night.. So my mom installed an artificial pond below his room.. Solves both problems."
"All right, but I really owe you one. You have no idea how many puppet shows you may have saved me from performing." Drawing her hand up, she anointed Tori with the imaginary offices of her sacred favor. "I hereby award you, Tori, one hundred Rosetta-points." Then, in a low voice, "Rosetta-points are not redeemable anywhere."
"Oh.." With downcast face, Tori bowed her head in acceptance.
"What? What is it?"
"My Rosetta-points are nonredeemable.." she squeaked piteously.
"I'm only joking. I still owe you a favor."
The light shed from the hallway gleamed intermittently off Tori's glasses as she looked up with renewed joy. "Ah, good. Because I do.. need your help."
They were standing in Tori's room, book mounds looming large on every available surface, and it seemed that when every nook and niche in the room had been crammed with literature, Tori had gotten innovative in her storage. Her mattress was borne on stacked books, architected such that they extended into the upright arms of a four-poster bed. Every surface chockablock with books, aside from the two inch hole in the back corner which swallowed Rosetta's finger to the knuckle, extending straight down into the ceiling of the room below.
She hazarded a guess, "..You want me to fix this hole?"
"No.." The hem of Tori's skirts brushed against Rosetta's bent knee as she leaned over with a spyglass in hand. "Here, you should look.. for yourself."
She tamped it into the hole and Rosetta peered into the lens, straight into the bowels of hell itself.
"No way." She lurched to her feet and turned to leave. "No way, I'm done. I've seen enough."
A hand clasped her wrist, loosely, applying no pressure or force. "R-rosetta, please, just listen.."
"You have one minute to explain."
"O-okay, well.. I heard this sound one night, when I couldn't sleep.. it sounded like.. moaning, coming from this hole, so I looked and.. it was Lukas, scribbling on a piece of paper.. But every few words he would stop and pound his forehead while saying: 'No, not good enough, it needs to be better, she deserves nothing less than perfection.' So I watched as he wrote, reams and reams of poetry, for hours, in utter anguish.."
Tori's fingers tightened. "Rosetta.. I think he's writing about.. about me."
"What? Er.. what makes you think that?" she asked.
"B-because," Tori looked flustered, her voice cracking like the treads in the stairs, unsteady but solid, "because he kept mentioning a 'flaxen haired maiden'.."
That creep, she thought, violating me with his god-awful poetry. "But how do you know it's you and not, uhm, Mist?"
Her smile grew sheepish. "W-well.. I don't mean any offense.. but he also used the word 'intelligent'.."
Wait, he thinks I'm intelligent. "Fine, I believe you. And you do realize this hole is two-way, right?" Confusion overtook Tori's heartened expression. "Never mind.. Just promise to keep it covered with a heavy tome from now on. Preferably some sort of religious text, open to a page that admonishes the sin of lust."
"Uhh.. sure.. but can I trust you with something, Rosetta?"
"Tell me what it is first."
"It's a poem and, well, a love confession," she spoke rapidly, "I've tried to give it to him.. but.. I'm too afraid.. what if he reads it and laughs.. it's not very good.. but I want him to know my true feelings. I don't want him to cry anymore. Not over me."
She ran full force down the stairs, tripping on the fourth step down and scraping her knee against a protuberance of sand crusting off the ledge. The light outside was beginning to fail, concentrated in lurid oranges and reds to the west.
"Rosetta, can it be!" She started at the sound of Lukas's boisterous call. The feckless minstrel was loitering along the wayside, rapping his staff on the flagstones, the dull clunk of the wood muted by his musical voice, "The rose of my heart. Eyes blooming red like the flowers I long to pluck for your wedding bouquet."
Terrible, just awful; she assessed his work as lackluster and trite. He wants to pluck my eyes? What the hell?
"It doesn't rhyme," she curtly responded, lengthening her stride.
"Dearest Rosetta, my verse for you is spontaneous as wildfire! Our love needs no conventions," he said, shuffling after her.
She rounded on him aggressively. "First of all, we have no love to speak of! And second.. You know what? Never mind that, I have a message for you." As she spoke, she took a folded note from her pocket, pressed flat from the stone that weighed heavy at her hip.
While she dipped her head toward his ear, his voice rippled across her cheek, "Anything, Rosetta, I could listen to your sweet-everythings all day."
Seconds later, she left him to read Tori's poem at his leisure. The whisper she had imparted in his ear still tingling on her lips:
"To you, from Zavier."
Vengeance and recompense never made such a delicious medley.
Author's Note: Yeah, the last chapter was a bit of a throwaway one, so I understand not getting any reviews for it. But now that the first story-arc is over, your feedback is appreciated and encouraged (tell me what you want to see more or less of). Also, I'm not sure exactly what constitutes an 'M'-rated fanfic versus 'T'.. this chapter seems a bit borderline as far as the dialogue goes. Or maybe I'm just a prude? Anyway, thank you for reading. I updated the information about this story on my profile page, as will be the case from now on after each new chapter.