Faithful Pebble
Part Eighty-Five
The wanderer didn't answer. He didn't prod. He didn't push. In all honesty, he didn't know how, especially since the girl did not expound. She only sat and quieted. Her tears dried. The breeze around them faded and her silence dragged on growing tall like the weeds and the grass and the shadows in the surrounding woods.
He watched them as he held her. He let her take her time. His patience would be rewarded, wouldn't it?
Pebble reached under her hood and wiped her eyes. Even as grieved as she was, she was careful. The wanderer could see it. She cautiously lifted the coarse brown fabric and tucked a shadowed hand beneath its tattered cover. She did this so he couldn't spy, so he couldn't peak and he respected that, though he did wonder and ponder and dream. Still, the wanderer waited patiently in the silence, in the awkwardness, as time tick-tick-ticked somewhere in his pocket.
His patience would be rewarded, wouldn't it? He hoped it would. He dreamed it would. He sighed when it wasn't.
The girl sat up then pulled away. She practically pushed him causing the wanderer to blink.
"Give me something," she said firmly.
The wanderer gaped.
Seeing his stammer, the girl frowned. Her frown deepened explicitly somewhere beneath her hood. He could hear it in her voice. "Give me something in return. This story's been one sided up 'til now. All of my life has been laid out before you ever since you walked into this valley and not once have you returned the favor. Give me one good reason why I should tell you more. Who are you? Some stranger and nothing more."
With that, Pebble snapped to her feet. She stormed up the steps to her little cottage and made straight-way for the door. It was when her fingers, those black and bloody and dirt-encrusted digits, finally found the equally filthy, equally black doorknob on that barely hinged-on door that the wanderer pulled her away.
He followed her quickly up the porch steps finding each squeak and squawk as he did so.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Squawk!
Then he gently grabbed her elbow pulling her from the door, from the decay locked away somewhere far behind it. She turned to yell, but then she paused, Pebble. Or was it Iris? Was she even Iris anymore? She looked up into his eyes and refused to think on that further. It was an easy task. His eyes stole her thoughts.
His gaze was thoughtful. His gaze was cautious, almost as cautious as she was in keeping her silence and veil. Careful and closed, he did not hide those feelings from her. Yet she was surprised to find longing there, a soft and empty and intense kind of emotion. It was constant. It was ancient. Even that she was allowed to see. Pebble marveled over it. She wondered if her eyes looked the same. She wondered what would happen if she showed him. What would he see? What would he do? It scared her.
"Ask me a question." His words came slow and steady, one word at a time, one thought at a time. "There is much I cannot tell you, but you can keep asking until you land on a question that I can. I can give you that." Gently, he let her go. Gently, her heart missed the contact.
- Calla