A/N: Yes, I'm going to be pathetic and ask for you, the reader, to please review. Please? Anyway, I'll continue to post this as it's written in sections (not really true chapters) if people actually want me to.
My name is Robert Fleurimonde. An introduction is always a proper way to begin a tale, if dull and over-used. Perhaps a name should not be used, for a name is merely a handle by which to call a soul—perhaps it would be better suited to my purposes if I was to start with a nameless existence or something to interest a reader. Perhaps I shall be luckier than more famous writers in that I shall not have to work for the interest of an audience. Perhaps rather than holding their attention line after line of poetic babble, I can simple write to ease my heart of the events of my recent life and wish for the best.
My mother and father were poor beasts of Lower Mossflower, destined to be taken across the channel as cheap labour when needed. That was how I grew up—living in a home owned by an employer who could take me from my beloved parents at his first whim. I never minded, thinking back to those early seasons. I was young and ignorant, spending my days playing in fields and trees, wandering up riverbeds with the wild children of the sailors who came through the port. It was a gay time full of mud wars and stealing petty things from markets that we could have easily gotten for free had we asked.
I was still young indeed when the red-sailed ships came for us. The air was brisk and the sails flapped ominously. A heavy-set badger in old finery and a thick moustache knocked on our door himself, carefully so not to get splinters or mould on his kidskin gloves.
We were transported with several other poor families across to the other land. They spoke the Mossflower tongue as a main language in that new place, but the faces of the natives were different. They seemed ruder, cruller, and unfriendly. I whimpered and clung to Mother's skirt.
It was decided that I was too small and weak to work these foreign docks, so a middle-class family with three children was found to take me in and give me schooling. My life belonged officially to the merchant who owned my poor, distant parents until I was of legal age, and so he chose what I was to do in life. He decided I was bright, and had me tutored. The other children in the home I lived in were not unlike me. Marlon and Fletcher were brothers, and the natural-born sons of my kind rabbit foster parents. The two boys were slim and strong, and though they were scarcely out of swaddling clothes they worked full shifts in the market at the fish stand. I played with the two rascals as if they were my own brothers, and they thought the same of me. Then there was gentle Adeline, a willowy young marten maid. She was in the same predicament as myself; her parents were workers on the dock, and she could not be housed by them as she couldn't work. I loved Adeline, in that childlike and unknowing manner, from the day I first met her. I considered everything about her perfect, lovely, caring and she was better than most of the dock boys when it came to our immature wars. When we picked teams, Adeline and I were always together, through thick and thin.
I spent many glorious seasons in that home and even took on their family surname as my own, but when I was legally an adult, I was accepted into a University far from the coast, and far from sweet Adeline. I went, despite the ache in my soul, and mastered my studies, passing in Sciences with great honours.
I never returned to that coast. I haven't seen Adeline since. I assume she's long since wedded a wealthy merchant or perhaps a fisherman at the least. Never a dock slave for Adeline. She was too refined in her pretty tomboy ways for such a thing.
And so, ending my memories of days long past, I continue.
It was a cool day, that fourth of April when it all began. The wind whipped mercilessly at my coat, and blew my useless papers from my ink-stained paws. The rain began to pour down on me, like the tears of embarrassment and disappointment that marked my own face.
I left the large main parchment of my presentation, soaked through with ink from a careless mishap, on a bench to become anew in the water. The sky was grey, and foreboding, and the street ran brown with sewage and garbage. Oh the fates were cruel to such a poor mouse, attempting to get somewhere in the world of science! One moment you're on the top of the world, the next you spill ink as you raise the designs of your brainchild.
Needless to say, the committee had laughed me out of the hall, refusing my proposition with less than a word.
So I walked, rain flinging itself longingly against me, soaking my fur, my trousers, my wool coat. The cold of it all touched me deeper than my skin, as if it took up my very soul in its clammy talons and screamed at me for being a fool. I kicked a piece of litter with my boot. It fell into a deepening puddle, and made a squelching noise.
It was only then that I noticed the flyer. It was hung on a light pole above that puddle by means of some sort of glue, but the water had softened it so I easily tore it down.
I chose not to linger in the rain, and instead shoved the paper away into a pocket deep in the recesses of my coat. The ink was beginning to run and the paper soft, but not so badly as to mark my clothing. Perhaps I could have avoided my adventure by accidentally ruining that poster, or even ignoring it in my haste to return home. I suppose it would have been the more intelligent thing to do, but often the best of us do not succeed in such things as thought when depressed or caught up in our own inner turmoil.
The rain pattering against the cobblestones made a sort of drum-like rhythm, which added to the eerie atmosphere. The few citizens other than myself walking through the streets were cautious enough to carry umbrellas, so not to dampen their fine suits.
The women, waiting at the windows for their late husbands were like pastel flowers blooming in the light of their homes. I saw in one window a particularly fine specimen of a ratmaid. Her fur shone pale silver as she rustled about the kitchen. Her waist was slender and tightly corseted, as was proper for all ladies in this modern era.
Clara. The mere sight of her sent my heart fluttering and I knew she was mine when I saw her. Her dark eyes with their long lashes made me forget Adeline entirely.
It had been a strange marriage, a joining of love rather than wealth and power as her parents had planned. It was especially odd, as I was no rat. I was a simple mouse, of no name or money. I had an honest job, and to support myself alone meant most of my time was spent working, but to care for a young wife as well…I rarely saw my Clara any more.
Her father had been horrified at her choice. He expected her to return to Redwall, the home of her youth, and become a proper Sister, caring for the residents of Mossflower. But instead she had moved to the city of Saint Rosemary Hall, a place of little to no religion despite its name. The hall itself had once been a chapel, created by the Saint Rosemary for the under-developed people of the sorry town. After the chapel, the town had pulsed its way to city-dom, forgetting all the Saint had tried to teach. A horse-drawn carriage rumbled past me, blocking for a moment my view of my beloved. Horses were silly beasts, unable to speak in protest of their mistreatment. They just continued on, no matter what, as if life itself was not worth enjoying.
I had met Clara at a presentation of mine three seasons ago. She came to me after I had spoken, and told me I had gotten my facts about the seal race incorrect. She claimed they were perfectly sentient beings, as had been demonstrated in a history of the abbey of Redwall she had once read. I had informed her that legends are occasionally mistaken for truthful information. It has been an argument of our ever since, and I don't suppose it'll ever be solved if I can't get my expedition created and funded.
Ah. My expedition. Perhaps my foolish nonsense can relent for a moment to describe what I had planned.
I wanted to build a suit. A suit into which fresh air could be pumped into and used air released by means of a pair of pipes. This suit would have pipes long enough for the wearer to be able to reach the floor of the shallower sections of the ocean, near the coast south of the Fire Mountain Salamandastron. They had all called it mad, and I was beginning to believe the same.
It's rather a sad day when an inventor loses faith in himself to the degree that he is willing to actually agree with his less creative companions. Such a day was this.
I took a chance and darted across the street when there came a gap in the train of horses. I made it to the door, up three stairs, and knocked. Clara refused to let me have a key—she said I'd leave it somewhere with our address and we'd be burglarised. Quite frankly, I believed her but didn't admit it.
"You look like a piece of thoroughly drowned Gandraian carpet!" She announced with a sweet laugh as she looked at me. "Come in, Robert, you'll die of pneumonia."
I walked into the warmth and brightness of the room, and I felt dry again from the inside out. I suddenly thought as though I could do no wrong, while I looked into Clara's dark brown eyes. I removed my heavy (more so as it was soaking with rainwater) coat and hung it on a rack by the door, which Clara closed behind me.
"Supper's ready," she said briskly, her accent of a higher and nobler breed than my own. It must have taken some adjustment on her part when she realised that as my wife, she's have no hand maid to wait upon her, nor servants to cook and clean. I appreciated all she was willing to do for me, although there were times when I doubted she noticed that I did so.
Her will to be elegant seemed to have simply grown into a deeply blossoming rose rather than fade away as it would for most young women in her situation. She managed to keep house and fend off tax collectors with ease, even though she danced in second-rate slippers and a dress made of old lace curtains and silk bed sheets on Saturdays.
Her father hadn't bothered coming to visit her once since our marriage, but her mother, a dear old lady, had managed to sneak in a few visits to provide us with old wine, or a wheel of expensive cheese.
"I thought tonight we could share a bottle of the champagne you bought from that closing brewery a few seasons back, Robert. It might lighten you spirits," Clara offered, seating herself in a drift of skirts. I took my seat across the small table from her, and I asked her how she had known my meeting had been a failure as I spooned some vegetable soup into by bowl.
"Robert," she smiled, "Darling, really, I can see it in your eyes. It's only proper for a wife to know what her husband is thinking!" I returned her smile and brought a spoonful of the steaming soup to my lips.
The soup burned with spices, but it warmed my saddened soul. I remembered the damp flyer in my sodden coat and thought back to what had caught my eye. Leaving the table momentarily, to Clara's dismay, I returned to the coat and reaching into that pocket, drawing forth the stained sheet of paper. Clara knew better than to intrude on my oddness, and so she remained silent as I tried unfolding and reading the paper.
"Sir Jacques Mithermay has a ship to lend," I said offhandedly as possible, setting the paper on the table next to my soup.
"Oh? And who is this Mithermay?" Clara smirked, standing with a rustle of petticoats.
"I'm really not certain, but it's got an address listed. He lives in Fortune Port—well, isn't that a poignant reminder of the past! I used to live there as a child. I can't remember why I never returned. It was a lovely place for such a dirty city."
"Well, shall we hire a carriage?" Clara said in a tone I couldn't discern. Was it sarcasm, or was she serious?
"I suppose we shall," I replied, hoping for the best. Clara smiled in her gentle way, eyes ever glinting. The yellow lamplight made her pale fur glimmer golden. I believe it was by candlelight that I always loved Clara the most. She resembled a sort of Goddess queen with her fur dyed that goldenrod yellow, and her gown a similar shade of ochre.
She gave me a light peck on the cheek before clearing the dishes. I decided that her silence meant I'd have to wait.