Life is Every Day

It was evening, four months from whence Artemis had arrived so mysteriously, the sky outside was soaring, in a sense. The colours, like saffron strands, poppy blossoms, river water, and grassy fields, all the earthly elements projected upon the heavens like a universe blooming overhead in a great arch, were brilliant yet dark in the approaching evening.

Inside the cottage, the small, lonely one at the far end of the village, it was a quiet scene, odd but calming. Supper had been finished and cleared away (by the long-suffering alchemist's apprentice), the alchemist, Alaric, was sitting at the plain wooden table with a leather-bound alchemy text spread in front of him, teaching his apprentice, Edgar. Artemis, on the other hand, was standing alone at the window, wrapped in a thoughtful silence. Both parties were deeply absorbed in their separate tasks.

The alchemist and his apprentice were fingering through an ancient volume of an alchemy text written in an esoteric rhyme that even the best of them had trouble understanding. The former was sitting slumped over the table, wearing his usual scarlet robe, his rich autumn gold hued hair reflecting the yellow firelight. He was built rather along the lines of Edgar, only taller. The long, fine line of his nose, slender, rather pale oval of his face and depthless, brilliantly blue eyes, sometimes like multi-faceted gems brought from a faraway ruin of an ancient desert city, sometimes reflecting patches of a pacific empyrean, but always suppressing a hidden power, put to mind something Artemis had once seen, on a tapestry, or painting, or… somewhere, he couldn't quite recall.

Alaric was then quietly discussing the finer points of alchemy with Edgar, the web of finely drawn out illustrations and the delicate lattice-work of the writing dancing in the flickering firelight made the both of them rather dreamy and far less guarded. The alchemist was very unlike himself that evening, not the usual acid-edged, cryptic teacher he was when the sun was high in the sky, also, he was actually just dishing out the sacred knowledge for Edgar to take, not making him work for it. And Edgar, for a change, was far less cringing and trembling and terrified of his master than usual, in fact, he actually seemed to be genuinely happy to be near the tall, masterful prodigy who was most probably, though he never hinted at any such thing, less than ten years older than himself. The slightest hint of closeness never before seen between the two began to creep in.

"Edgar, thou hath talent." Alaric mused aloud, rather than saying to anyone in particular.

"Really?" Edgar said, a faint flicker of a grin flashed onto his usually passive face and disappearing like the palest star in the dawn.

"Yes, I should say so, thou learns fast and mayhap soon assist me in thy studies." Alaric replied, more seriously that time.

"Thou doth praise too much, I fear I am unworthy, just thy other day I broke thy pot and thou flogged me, hard." The apprentice said wryly.

"Ahh, I yet remember that." The alchemist gave his reply, his thin line of a lip curving into an amused smile, and continued, "I imagined thou should not want to remind me lest I should want to beat thou yet again."

So their conversation continued until Edgar raised another question on alchemy and then they went back to work.

On Artemis's end of the cottage, things couldn't have been more different, he was getting increasingly frustrated as each day passed with the horrible pair of suspicious do-gooders. Edgar was tolerable, alone, he would have given him all he needed to know on making gold (albeit by accident) in a heartbeat, but Alaric, was another story, he seemed to have eyes on the back of his head and perhaps even another pair which he had implanted into his brain. The alchemist could rival even Foaly in terms of paranoia, and intellect too, Artemis grudgingly thought. When he had offered to do some work and 'make himself useful' in a bid to get close to the giant shelf of books, Alaric had raised his eyebrows at him, thought awhile, and then delegated him to help 'poor widow Veritie take care of her children' and 'assist thy surgeon down thy road' as both were very poor and very busy and very much needed help, did he not agree, so why not go at once? Oh, no, no they certainly would not miss him, especially if he were absent for such a worthy cause. Urrgh, curse the fool.

Then he felt guilty again, it wasn't like his usual self to have a conscience, not even after he had met the fairies, but in the past months, something seemed to have changed in himself, maybe it was in the air, or perhaps in the well water. Artemis couldn't quite put a finger to it himself, maybe it was the 'purification' the alchemist went on about so frequently, or maybe it was the alchemist himself, silly as it was that anyone could possibly exert any such positive influence on him.

The past months, Artemis decided to look through them again. The memories themselves were clear in his mind's eye where he could see everything from a spectator's point of view, like flipping through a book in a way:

He could see it just as it had happened, a week after he had arrived at the cottage, Alaric decided to give him some things to do just as he had asked.

"Never before have I heard anyone besides my apprentice ask for work, but there is much work to do in this village, hm, hm, hmm…" He was grinning as if he were harbouring some sort of secret notion, like he knew something Artemis didn't. "Hm, hm, hm…I could give thou much work to do." Then after a few minutes he clapped his hands, "Ah, thou could help thy widow, widow Veritie in thy village, yes she is in need of much help."

So he went, to the widow's house, or rather, hovel, he could still see it although he had given up trying to help out there after one awful day of squalling children, dirt encrusted floors and cooking dinner with a burnt out tea kettle:

Although it was daytime outside, the house was dark, the stone walls were time worn and the dyed linen drapings were grubby, dull shades of aged red and yellow. The room was low-ceilinged and dingy with an oppressive air hanging about the place. The stove in one corner of the house was blackened and the inside was heaped high with the ashes of burnt wood the woman had not the time to clear away.

The widow was sitting at the far end of the house under a window, as if she were trying to absorb the sunlight within the darkness. She was cradling two young children, asleep, then.

Artemis stepped in, as quietly as he could, he walked towards the woman who was staying stock still in the darkness as if chained to the dim wall. As he got nearer, he saw that widow Veritie wasn't old as he imagined her to be, she was most probably not twenty-five even. Yet, her face (from what he could see of it), was lined with worry and grief, and her worn hands depicting her hard, sad life. Then she turned, seeing him, she said sharply, her voice full of suspicion, "Who is here? I know thou is here."

He felt sorry for her then, who could possibly be so suspicious as to believe that every stranger meant her harm? And why?

Well, he never got to know that, there wasn't any time for preliminaries once she realized he had come down to help, she started drabbling on and on and on about just how much she had to do and just how much he needed to help her. Artemis never really got down to helping her either though, he left after a day. He remembered the alchemist's face when he told him about it.

"Well, I never believed that anyone would suffer the termagant's company and so I am not surprised." The alchemist remarked in his usual triumphant, knowing way. "In that case, why not thy surgeon's? He is by far more worthy than that insufferable woman!"

Artemis was rather, well, miffed, to put it nicely, he had wanted an opportunity to look through the gold-making texts (he had not forgotten how there were no alchemy texts to be found by the third millennium, and he wanted to make the most use of his time), but there was nothing else to do then besides helping the 'poor, busy, tired surgeon' and hoping that he wasn't as bad as the doctors at St. Bartleby's. As Artemis found out in the week after, he wasn't, he was worse. On his first day as the surgeon's apprentice (read: slave), he had had to help the madman drill holes into supposedly 'mad' people's skulls to drive the evil spirits out, and returned to the cottage blood-drenched and bitten by a few truly mad patients and raring to quit (that is, until the alchemist brought up the matter of a short-staffed leper's colony).

Artemis gazed out of the window, the sky was turning darker and darker as the sun retreated down the horizon and so was the conversation at the table at the other end of the room.

"Oh yes, I forgot to tell thou earlier, but in thy after noon, a traveler came through thy village on horseback," Edgar breathed deeply, then continued, "he brought news from London, all with relation to any sort of magicks, sorcery and demonic forces will be eliminated on thy orders of thy Church!"

"Really?" There was an audible gasp as Alaric inhaled sharply. "Are they suspicious of any in thy village then?"

"No, but thy villagers, they are thy ones who shall bring about our ruin." Came the answer.

Having heard this, Artemis turned and quickly joined them at the table, "If that is so, then what shall we do?"

"We all shall then have to leave, unless thou wishes not to follow…"

"I'm coming too."

Twinparadox----just a question, who do you guys like the best in the story?

(I like Foaly personally)