Author's Notes: This chapter is. Um. Miserable. It was a miserable idea and it was miserable to write, and I'd imagine that it's a pretty miserable read. So if you're not up for the kind of thing, unless you have a particularly acute sense of schadenfreude, do something else for the moment. :D; I have a love-hate affair with how this turned out. I kind of like it. And at the same time, I feel like I missed a million things I could've done to make it brilliant. Ah well.
(---)
2 / Resolve
He failed on his mission. It was his first loss, and he curled in a nest of wild grasses, the sunlight blurred in his eyes by blood loss and fear. He failed he failed he failed the light was harsh and his body burning from running. They wouldn't want him to get away. They would chase him. They would chase him down. They would chase him down and kill him.
This was something he knew, and this was the reason he struggled to push himself off the ground. Rise rise rise rise. He couldn't rise. He fell back down into the grass, exhausted. Hopeless, hopelessly watching his bandaged hands curl and uncurl and feeling the bandages resisting his movements and for a moment he had a funny idea that maybe if he took everything off he could get up and escape and live, all the clothes and hair and skin and flesh and bones binding him and feeling so heavy – but then there wouldn't be much left, would there? Ah, there would be enough, the soft insides beneath the bones he felt sometimes, and that could run run away...
He didn't want to die now. There were things he wanted out of life, things he had to have before death things new and wondrous to him he needed to fi nd he nee d e d t o f i n d . . .
no –
couldn't succumb to - -
fight it, no no no so afraid of
don't want to
please
Night, dew, cool and alien against his skin. He woke slowly, as if the past day had been surreal, some dream, because he couldn't be dying, could he? He blinked and saw the grass; no, it had been real, and now his failure was his to handle.
Heavy, he still felt so heavy, but the bleeding had stopped and it looked as if he might live. They hadn't found him, or at least had not killed him. Why, that he could not fathom, but it didn't matter. They hadn't, and he gladly took such a blessing.
He madly tried to quench his thirst, his weighted tongue, with the tiny drops of water hanging from grasses and leaves. Bit by bit, cool, sweet dew entered his mouth and slid down his throat. It was all so much work for this dab of moisture, so much effort for his exhausted body. Yet he had been spared from death and unlike long before, he felt life worth struggling for. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to feel, beyond his pounding head, where it was. Faintly, it flickered to him, no certain direction, he was too weak to tell; but it was there, it was waiting for him.
Morning, with hunger's airy weakness, he laid one hand on the ground, then the other, and pushed himself upwards. The little blood he had flowed away from his head, and a wave of dizziness passed as he tried desperately not to fall back down. After ages, his vision cleared, and he proceeded to gingerly stagger to his feet.
One step after another, he forced his legs to walk and his back to keep from falling. The village was only a mile or two away. Just a mile. These legs have lasted longer. He didn't think about how he would handle when he got there, or check his pockets for the amount of gold he had. No. First things first. The village, and then it would be fine.
It was a clear day, but cold, the sunlight briefly warming before burning and the shadows chilling with wind. The grass was strong and rich green against his toes, but winter was not yet gone. He had thought that they had been blessed with a mild winter, but a pulsing in his dizzy head told him that a snowstorm was soon to come. Before then- before then – the village. And he would be fine.
Throbbing pain caused something nauseating to turn in his stomach, and he wished that he had some vulnerary left. A lurch, and he knelt in the tall grass (he felt a tingle and knew the wound opened again), gagging, but nothing coming to relieve him of the sick feeling. He closed his eyes, and the airy, bloating feeling built inside of him. rest, rest, rest, he needed rest but couldn't, not yet, a little further and The village was within sight, and faint or fall or die once there that was where he needed to be.
It was the distance that was the impossible and he was reminded of that ancient paradox about how distances should be impossible to travel and however inapplicable it seemed true to him then. It was closer but it seemed no closer because of all the steps he had yet to take. There was the sun and there it was falling into the earth and he couldn't move quickly enough, his legs weren't moving like they should and the whole contraption was swaying dangerously on the steel pinhead of balance.
The grass was too tall and it caught between his toes and resisted his movement like wading through water, no, oil, no, mud, no, it was harsh and not fluid and scraped at his feet and snared at them in little vines. It wouldn't be too bad to fall on, it was cushy and would break his landing and curve around him and keep him warm despite winds – wrong, no, it would not suffice for snow and if he rested he would die for sure. He wished he could scream in frustration but he had neither the energy nor the voice.
There was the village gate before him and he leaned for a moment against it to catch his breath. He was thankful that it was a workday or perhaps a church day and the streets were not closed with clouds of people because in his state he would not be able to blend and he was forced open to the world with the dried blood on his tattered clothes. The few passerby looked curiously and one asked if he would be fine and what had happened and where is your mother, child? but he didn't have the strength left to think of a response in words and wandered by her vacantly. So long as it was not a cry of alarm or fear he was in no danger from these people, though often he thought he saw their lips move in the likeliness of that cursed but it always turned into something else. Still his eyes flashed wearily from face to face for a sign that he should flee (where to?) and this time he found no sign which was good.
An inn at long last, he entered and felt three gold coins in his pocket and looked at the balding man who looked back without sympathy. In understanding, he left.
He entertained the thought of perhaps sleeping in the street but again he thought of snow and now the waste on the streets and a festering wound was always dangerous. His shadow skirting the alleyways passed by orphan children who organized stones by color and glanced at him listlessly, and he did not spare a coin for them as such was the world he had learned of and adopted.
The buildings were small against the sky as opposed to the palaces he'd seen or the town church but they cast lengthy cold shadows. He tried to look for an inn, the silhouette of a bed on a flapping sign beside a door, another one, cheaper and likely shabby but hopefully still there, but instead he saw tailors and blacksmiths and chatting women. The day crept on and for a moment he entertained the notion that he was simply not meant to live past the day much like he was not meant to...
Patently ridiculous, he told himself, though it was for that fear that he never thought twice about why he journeyed.
It was afternoon, he presumed from the new flood of people pouring into the streets. They stared at him, and self-consciously, he held his left arm at an awkward angle to hide the most bloodstained portion of his robes. Although it had little effect, he felt pressed to do something to somehow mask it away from their eyes.
Here, finally, was another inn, and he hesitated, daring to hope that it would be the one he sought. Clearing his throat slightly, he asked the innkeeper, "How much for a night's stay?"
"Twenty gold," she said, perhaps earnestly, or perhaps thinking to profit off his desperate state. He stood there in the doorway for a moment, almost in denial, knowing that it was getting cold and windy and had little time left. For a moment, he thought that he might suggest two gold to the woman, but shook his head and exited without complaint. It would only waste time and energy, and of both he had very little left.
Already, the sun had set, and the world took on dusky hues. He moved his toes in his battered shoes and rocked slightly on his feet, wanting to admit defeat but knowing that he couldn't. Think, he needed to think of something. Certainly, it was something he often failed at for lengths of time, even with sufficient motivation, but that was three years ago and he had grown past that. Or, perhaps, it was one of those things that would never change. If that were the case, then, it didn't seem terribly unlikely that he'd die well before he found what he wanted.
He buried his fingers in his hair and, slowly, let himself sit on the dirty street. Bringing his elbows closer, he held his knees tightly against his chest, trying to keep out the wind and the world. He had walked to the destitute portion of the village, where few dared to venture outside without reason, and the stale scent of human waste wafted around him.
It was all so much, and for a moment, he thought of giving up his journey. It took perhaps too long this time for him to reject that notion. No, that wasn't an option in any form, because there was no other chance for him.
Against the sky, showing the first sign of stars, he wearily looked at the shapes of old roofs, a broken weather vane, a fancy steeple. And stared at that steeple. Slowly, he brought a hand to rest on the center of his forehead, that patch of skin that felt no different under his fingers but, to him, tingled with his touch. He hated it when their eyes wandered to rest on it and he never knew why. But in the face of his situation, such feelings were petty.
"May I rest under the protection of Ashera for the night?" he asked them, brushing hair from his face to bring attention to the mark.
He flinched as the woman who washed his face rubbed the towel over his forehead a few extra times, as if to ascertain that it was real. During the few hours the priests and priestesses fussed over him, he patiently entertained their small talk. He was Ike, a Spirit Charmer from Begnion, and he was on a journey to find his mentor. Unfortunately, he had been attacked by bandits on the outskirts of the village.
"Ike? That's a very masculine name," the spacey priestess dressing his wound commented. "And you're so sweet. I'd have thought you'd be named something with an n. Maybe an s." Stiffly, he gave a vague nod and tried to laugh with the rest of the clergy.
He never liked pretending to accept their touches or the way they smothered him under words and looks. He wanted to bury himself somewhere away from the dark centers of their eyes. When, finally, they deemed it time to rest and he was alone, he felt an eerie presence around him, as if knowing and laughing. A presence and only a presence, without eyes to hide from, without a direction to hide his wound from. He swallowed and noticed that there were no windows in this room.
He was alive in the sense of circus animals, looking sweet and skilled in terror.
But failures weren't choosers.