Watching the Waters
"Thank you, Raelli. Please keep me informed." Vrandel pressed his fingertips into his throbbing temples as the servant left, bowing as his form disappeared into the shadow of the doorway. The merchant, seated at the low, desert-style table, shifted, irritation written all over the pained expression on his face. 'Great good Gods, what has happened to me?'
The wind shifted, carrying the expensive, tapestry-silk curtains fluttering into the room. The sun shimmered off of the bead curtains, reflecting a spectrum of light onto the rough, sandstone walls; these rooms were cool and dark, meant to keep the daylight and the heat out and still allow for occasional breezes to blow in from the ocean.
Vrandel leaned back in his chair, letting the thick padding embrace his sore shoulders and cradle his aching back. This week, how had he survived it?
'It's like an itch on my neck, like something is about to happen, but nothing ever does…'
The merchant scratched idly at his neck and the soft, silvery hair he found there.
"My Lord?" The whisper was tiny, tinny. Vrandel glanced up, running his fingers nervously through his fine hair. The servant girl, dressed in a long, sequined dress of gold mesh and black, clenched her fingers nervously and cleared her throat. There were tiny bells grasping her thin ankles and wrists and jingled from the gold mesh overdress. The wide, exposed skin of her stomach was laced in thin black lines of her tattoo. The mark was of her status; it was a permanent caste system into which she had been born, and she was what she was. Content in her station in life, the girl served well and honorably the whims of her lord.
"Gylanda? Is there something wrong?" He beckoned her forward into the room. The servant girl inched forward, grace making her steps light on the carpeted floor.
Kohl lined the rims of her worried blue eyes, and she settled on the floor at her master's feet, her skirts forming a perfect circle about her legs. "I have never seen my lord like this." She glanced down at her hands, tangled in the colorful fabric of her skirts. "You are worrying the servants, my lord, first with your prolonged mourning, and now with your incessant searching. My Lord!" the girl cried, rubbing her hand against the skin of the back of her lord's hand, "you must allow me to help you. Tell me for what you so insistently search. You give me no duties; I…"
"Gylanda." That one word hushed her, but did not stop her sudden rush of tears. The woman knelt before him; Vrandel, in his mourning, had not even thought of this poor girl's fate. With the children gone and without Vrandel accepting guests into his home, Gylanda's duties had dwindled down to nothing, leaving her stranded, unable to leave her master's manor. Vrandel pressed his fingers against his temples, trying to press the forming headache out from between his ears. "My dear Gylanda. You have served me honorably and well for many years, since you were a child. I cannot thank you enough for the service you have given me, but I no longer am in need of a caretaker for my children." The words caught and clouded in his throat as he spoke them, tears pricking the edges of her eyelids.
"I am sorry, my lord, that I am no longer of use to you."
"Tell me where you want to be, what you want to do, and I will do what I can to make it so."
The girl was silent for a very long time, considering. Vrandel smiled with pride; he had taught her to think, to question. She was far brighter than most of the servants of his peers; she had enough of a mind to make sound snap decisions, and was a star pupil of his training. "I wish above all things to continue to serve you, but if you no longer have need of me, I can only wish for freedom. To be sent across the sea and be freed of this desert."
Vrandel smiled, placing a gentle hand on the silvery-blonde head bowed before him. "As you desire. I will send for a ship… Go and pack your things, Gylanda."
The girl stepped out of the room, her eyes shining with hope and unshed tears. Vrandel listened to the bells on her clothes shiver in the growing silence.
'There is something in the air; it's been plaguing every moment of my life since that… that Dream.' Vrandel picked himself up out of the chair and stepped over to his window, looking down on the wild, market streets. Children ran across the packed dirt of streets, slipping hands into unguarded pockets and purses. Woman lined the streets, carrying large baskets and balancing infants on their wide hips.
The merchant watched without care or concern. The world would continue to writhe and flow with or without him; he felt separate and detached from the colorful streets.
It took him a moment to notice his eyes had moved to, then settled, on one particularly strange woman, walking wide-eyed in the market. She was overdressed for the immense, pressing heat. She wore leather from the tips of her toes up to the frail curve of her neck, every inch of her pale, northern skin wrapped in dull brown. Vrandel's wide eyes fixed on the top of her pale head, running over the length of her body. She looked…
Seeming to know she was under close scrutiny, the Northern woman looked up, her eyes meeting Vrandel's, sparks of recognition blinding them to anything else.
Whoo rah. A little bit of a slow chapter, sorry. It'll pick up hopefully; I haven't been much in a mood to write lately.
Luvs!
:mina: