7.
A Lick And A Promise
-x-
The dark grey of an autumn storm sweeping across the suns had already arrived. It came in, slowly and drearily. Until spring, perhaps, the last of its kind. DG listened to the rain, carefully trod upon the roof, with a louder tack against the chimney, or the sounds at the corners as it gushed to the ground. The potbellied parlour stove imbued the luxury of cosiness never known in the galactic palace rooms. She'd browsed the books before the trim of daylight and the first cool drop rippled the rain barrel. On the shelf were cookbooks, guide books of the southern realms, and, shoved between covers worn was one thin hardcover without a title. A journal, told by handwritten pages. A journal of the household goods, inventory, expenditures, of the Littles, Alec and Schuyler. DG had nearly believed they were an invention, a fable needed to make the old orchard seem less intangible. To find that they had lived—lived and cared about their home that never was—one word was smeared where she'd left a tear.
In the lay that transformed thoughts to lazy daises, DG tried to focus on Wyatt. His behaviour, was it mysterious or was there a method? Had she seen the shrouds of loneliness in his eyes? Was it the caustic grip of a grief that would not leave? His sorrow had been ever-present. She knew sorrow could change, the skin of a chameleon overcoming the wisdom of man. Had it altered to the warmth of fingers across her lips? Or a hope that loyalty remained… Through his friends, the condensation of his misery might be sieved.
Cerebral strength waned considerably as Chimtu, from her mound of quilt by the stove, roved from it. Her purpose was the door. A moment later, behind a grumble from the angry sky, the travellers returned. Wyatt crossed the threshold, so full of rain, a cloudburst himself, that Chimtu shook to rid herself of his residue. DG forgot all she had philosophised and rushed to aid. She swept off his hat and readied a hand for his coat. Out the screen, the damp, scented wind raised hair along chilled arms beneath a sweater.
"Where is Glitch?"
"He's coming."
Wyatt found his coat taken from him. She hadn't allowed him to protest. They were hauled to the potbellied stove, to dry and rest. The screen door popped and snapped. DG went frigid at the sight of Glitch. He was costumed in uncertainty, the way he would sometimes get. She caught the scent of a lie on the back of the storm.
The theory transcended from thought to reality as Wyatt excused himself. "Bed," he declared, and moved wearied limbs away. Passing through the kitchen, he stopped. He sniffed. He looked at DG.
"I… tried to cook something," she murmured, ashamed of her lacking skills.
Glitch emitted an astonished, nonsensical grunt. His hand upon her neck was ponderous sympathy. She stepped from it, to the shaft of the kitchen's lantern light.
"It's a mess." DG had yet to apologise. She'd left the ruined cobbler on display, and a burned, unidentifiable artefact on a tray next to it. "I got frustrated, all at once, so I gave the kitchen a lick and a promise, and betook myself elsewhere. Away from stoves. And hot things. And food in general."
Wyatt merely nodded. "It's fine. I'll clean it up tomorrow, before Meria gets here. Really," he pressured sincerity into her shoulder, "it's fine. I just hope you ate something."
"Raw left some trail mix. He'll have to come back soon, too, since I… ate it all."
He altered his hand to touch her jaw, smiling, a gleam of pale mirth inside. "He'll be glad someone's eaten it. Think it's been sitting in the cupboard since I moved in. Well, goodnight." The turning away screamed awkwardness, misunderstanding. Three times, his leg was patted, and Chimtu came to him. He fixed an emotionless, uncompromising eye upon Glitch. "I'll see you in the morning."
"If I'm still alive."
Wyatt had gone and DG had worried.
"Are you…? Did Meria heal your headache?"
"The headache—the least of my concerns right now." The bob of his shaggy, damp head indicated the alcove beyond the parlour. He needed to shed the layers of wet. "And I'm not so comfortable doing that in the middle of the kitchen. On any other day, maybe. Wet is one thing. Cold is always another. Come with me. I need to talk. Whether you listen, that is up to you. I can't control the antipathy of your ears."
DG shut the bedroom door. Wyatt's room was in the loft, but above them was storage. Empty yet. There was nothing to store. The rain dimmed their voices and all the noise of Glitch's clothes, but they still whispered when they spoke. She lit a wick by the will of magic, only a child's game, a parlour trick. Glitch had removed the coat to the desk chair's bald back, and DG picked it up from there. He flinched at her hands and quivered at the fingertips across his abdomen.
"Sorry," she stepped away only to have her wrist grabbed and returned to the warm beneath his shirt. Their half-steps collided thighs and intentions. "I thought we said hands off until we know what's wrong with Wyatt?"
"You found out something." He pinched her lip gently in his teeth and pulled from her the precursory breath of ecstasy. "I found out something. With what you found out and with what I found out, I think we've found out. And visiting Meria… I had a thought. It's this place."
She leaned away, the roam of explicit thoughts lost in the sobering fray. "This place?"
"More than this place. It's him. Don't get me wrong, it's him. But it's—it's— Oh, DG, it's everything. It's morbid and fantastic and incongruent." He stomped in the emptiness beside the bed. A pillow was picked at, tossed, the victim of a frustrated man. "Didn't you say that you saw something in him yesterday? What was it, did you decide?"
"A wistful look," she said, crossing her arms and kneeling on the bed, "wistful and sad."
"Lonely and full of longing."
"Yeah." DG read the proclamation, a thousand words upon Glitch's face. If they knew Wyatt's burden, shouldn't they be glad? But they had been corticated, and left to writhe, unprotected. "He tried to kiss me."
"I let him kiss me."
DG tilted her head and tucked a hair behind her ear. She thought of the journal she'd found, the precious lines about nothing at all, only the jelly jars, the state of pressed linens. And how Wyatt must've cared, too, about this place. It was a dream for the lonely and the dead.
She went to Glitch and held him. The ethereal monody in the rain, the perfume of it in Glitch's skin, all painted the images of a vacant woods, two men embracing, her favourite Glitch, and her second favourite Wyatt Cain.
"You're not angry." Glitch's chest vibrated beneath her ear, voice and nerves and breath.
"No," she remembered to say so quickly. "No… I should've kissed him."
"Why?"
"It gave you answers. I'm still helplessly facing a thousand questions."
"It wouldn't help if I tried to tell you. Like kissing a veil, a mask, and only a spark of it was sane."
"There was a spark."
"I'm made of flint. I spark at the slightest touch of metal, steel, iron, or tin. You're steel. Wyatt is still made of iron. You should talk to him. He invited both of us here. And the cryptic thing is tiresome by now. The faire will start in two days. We're running out of time."
The faire had become the doomsday date.
"I'll talk to him."
"Don't kiss him. Let him speak the answers. Orally. And by that I mean with a voice and a tongue and lungs pushing out air."
"I promise. Would you do it again?"
"Kiss him?"
"Would you?"
"My lips belong to you. The heart and the half a brain, too."
"I'm not jealous. You haven't given me a reason to be."
"But I kissed him."
"He's Wyatt."
"And that means that you would kiss him, too."
"I'll talk to him."
"When?"
"Tomorrow." Each of DG's hands grabbed a corner of the sweater hem, and up it went, high over her head. Glitch helped. To him, this was one of the nicest parts of his day. "Not tonight. I'm tired and heartsick tonight. Strangely lonely, almost homesick. For what, I don't know. Just melancholy. Loving the rain and wishing I could stay in it. But I expect blue skies in the morning. We'll wake again to the scent of apples cooking."
Glitch kissed her sweetly, neck and eyelids and chin, and tucked her beneath the covers. He left the shutters open to catch the wind, to hear the last of the storm as over the remote hills it went. For hours, stopping and starting, they spoke the traditional all and sundry of daily things. She drifted to sleep, the flutter of discontent cupped inside her heart. And when Glitch slept, he woke at the start of another vagrant storm. He locked the shutters and hid beneath the pillow and DG's arm. And thereafter, as night ebbed and storms were spent, anger and horror razed the delicacy of his dreamscapes.
