.
A pendulum clock swung nonchalantly in the corner. It ticked and tocked, with little to no regard for the conversations livening up the empty space in the cushy office. What else was it supposed to do? It was a clock, not a mediator. Its job wasn't to render their talks down to a more pleasant state of being, its job was to measure time.
And measure time, it did.
A good hour it has been, since the woolen wrapping had taken her two strays in for tea. A good hour of their non-stop chatter, cut and laced with remarks from one another about their shared and varied experiences. Andy sat rather comfortably in a puffy comfort emporium, reserved usually for the teachers and workers of the establishment - or so his mind had told him. Mostima bummed out in the exact same chair, because there wasn't another one available, sides for a wooden amalgamation opposite Miss Niederhauser's chopping block of a desk. Lounging next to Andy on the cushions proved the more alluring decision, and it wasn't like they'd assault eachother's space either. Andy, being the underfed and arm-less creation he was, didn't exactly take much of the seat, and Mostima out of her heavy coatings also proved to be quite thin. So they sat and sat, bubbling their noses in tea and waddling their tongues around in recollection of the Kazdelian wildlands and the Lateran sunsets.
"... There was this unspoken law there. As unspoken as a cleaved throat could mutter, anyway. There was a general rule of thumb where the mercs would keep an ounce of respect for one another, even if just momentarily. You know, like allowing a bleeding man his last cigarette, or a look at the catastrophe riddled sky. Like watching the sunset together before your bounty target eventually succumbs to the nine millimeter wounds in his stomach. Giving a Scar Market slave escapee something warm to wear and a set of directions towards the nearest settlement, maybe. That one actually, that might've just been me. That might've been me. I remember, I used to run with this one "posse" we'll call it, and there was me, a big burly type, a quiet snark-fest and a loud, explosive cockroach. I say cockroach, because I never really liked her. I mean, no. I'm lying, I did like her."
"To the point, Drewie."
"Right. Right, so the point was that we once set camp in a desert plain, and it was somewhere in the middle-eastern part of the country. That's Scar Market territory, to your information."
"Law almighty, what in God's name is a "Scar Market…?"
"It's like a moving grocery store, Miss Niederhauser. A big, grocery store on caterpillar tracks. Oh, and also the slave-trading epicenter of Kazdel."
"Dear Law…"
"So anyway, we sat there during the night, warming up to the cooling sands and huddling around a campfire, as always. I always sort of stuck with the cockroach girl, because she did prove a somewhat decent talk-buddy after hours. When we weren't jumping at each other's throats, at least. But in my defense, I almost always had a good reason. Almost always, because she'd often run her mouth about everything and nothing. And quite the mouth she had on her, lemme tell you."
"Drewie…"
"Right. Right. So, anyway, we sat there, watched the stars, poked fun at Hedley and–... I mean, at the quiet type and his snarky lady, and we ate whatever lizard or loose feather-fowl we managed to track during the day. And you know, that cockroach girl, I talk a lot of smack about her, but admittedly she was quite the cook. I can't even think of anything foul to yap about her cooking, because…"
"Drewie, can we keep your Sarkaz girlfriend out of the picture?"
"She's not… She wasn't!"
"Oh, Law… For the record, Andrew, I'm not exactly one to be influenced by traditionalists views on interracial Sankta-Sarkaz relations and the implications they may bring, but…"
"We weren't close, Miss Niederhauser! We weren't even friends."
"Of course you weren't friends, duh. Way more than that."
"Dude, I swear to god…"
"Ahem. This, um… This Scar Market entity, then…?"
"Scar Market! Right. So we sat there, stargazing to kill the time–"
"Just merc-buddies, huh."
"... Stargazing to kill the time, watching the clouds grazing around the dim yonder... and suddenly!"
"Suddenly?"
"She grabs me by the sleeve."
"Uh-huh. And pulls you in for a smooch?"
"I'm going to pummel you."
"Tch. Not in front of the headmistress, brute."
"Children, can we not?"
"Children?"
"Children?"
"Well, you two will always somewhat be children to me. Very unruly, very troublesome and very windswept children, but still children. I hope to be pardoned, miss Legatus. "
"Pardoned right away, Miss. Drew?"
"Right. So she yanked my sleeve, and dragged me away from camp. From a distance, I could already hear someone sort of-, um… choking? Heaving? Exerted, for sure. Like staring down an endless well, it was so dark I could barely see. But then she flicked a lighter and showed me. There – then, on the sand, a living, breathing carpet. A quivering, malnourished carpet."
"A carpet?"
"I mean, a man. A man, not a carpet."
"Mr flowery language over here. You had the time to learn writing fancy but not dropping by home to say hi?"
"Shut up. Anyway, there was a man. Someone had thrown a rag over him, and he collapsed in the sand not so far from our little camp, probably for the worse of him. You know, we realized off the bat that it must've been a Scar Market slave escapee, and good for him. But lying there like this? Hell, if it was for me, I'd have cut my losses and kept running, but he didn't. He just lay there, staring us up and down, flickering in that little flame of her lighter. And here's the kicker, he didn't even bother booking it for the hills when we approached. He didn't bother that there were two armed mercs gawking at his little display of pathetic null."
"Andrew, how could the man have been pathetic, if he was a–... a slave market escapee? How can you call him that?"
"What else should I call him?"
"Brave? Valiant? I don't-... I don't know what Kazdel's standards are for your average slave of all things, and… and to be frank, the mere thought brings my stomach to convulsions, but surely that man couldn't have been pathetic? To reach for a fleeting brim of freedom in the face of a certain evil, is that not a hero's whim? That doesn't sound like something a coward would do."
"Well… well, yeah , I guess, but… but you gotta understand, Miss Niederhauser, these people, they were like… I mean, that was a slave escapee. A Sarkaz slave escapee. With the horns, and everything…"
"Does it matter if he was a slave or not? Sarkaz or Sankta? Are we not all human?"
"Well, it's easy for you to say."
"Excuse me?"
"I m-mean, as in, you've never exactly been to Kazdel or left Laterano, so…"
"Mostima, have you had similar experiences to Andrew on your journey into Kazdel? Am I the weird one here?"
"Hm? Oh, no. No, don't meddle me into this, Miss Niedehrauser. I'm just as shocked as you are with all his blathering."
"Exactly… I suppose I'm just… I wouldn't have ever suspected the same Andrew Reiff that gave me big grins and puppy eyes whenever Burk caught him dilly-dallying from class to be speaking so loosely of… of a dimming human life."
"..."
"..."
"... Speaking of, is Mr Burk around anywhere…?"
"Burk died three years ago."
"Oh."
"We hired a new janitor right after."
"That's good, I guess…"
"But the gaping hole he left could never really be filled with a replacement. Mentioning all this, experiencing a loss of a colleague firsthand… I'm just unsure of how your perception of right and wrong could've been twisted that far? You speak of death and all these terrible things so lightly, and… and that wasn't even the worst of it. From all the things you've told me today, I remained quiet for the most part and strayed away from commenting, but… I mean, look at it all, Andrew. Has Kazdel really re-programmed you that hard…? Have you not a smidge of compassion left?"
"I think I do."
"You *think* you do?"
"Yeah."
"Then what was the moral of the story you were telling? What does the end entail?"
"The girl I was with pointed at the man and laughed, and told me I'll end up like him someday. And then she popped her canteen open and drank as much water as she could, then emptied the rest into the sand in front of him."
"... A-And? And what did you do?"
"And I thought that was wrong. And I filled her gun with blanks the following day."
"..."
"See, Miss Niederhauser? I'm not all bad."
"... You're… You're not, Andrew. I suppose you're not. The self is a tenebrous and spiral staircase, after all. There's much one can fit into it."
"Into what?"
"Into the staircase, dumbshit."
"Hey, don't call me that."
"Or what?"
"Miss Niederhauser, she called me a "dumbshit"- OW."
"Mostima, please don't call Andrew that word."
"..."
.
A gentle flow of tea filtered through her puckered lips. Taking a break from the mindless conversation proved to be her only respite at the warm and cozy moment. A steel pendulum kept swinging to each beat of her heart, counting out the seconds lost in gooey glee.
.
"... And you?" Miss Niederhauser asked, nudging the tip of her teacup towards Mostima's perking horns. "How's the Basilica treating you? Any better than Andrew's misery troupe?"
"It wasn't a misery troupe…" He butted in, dejectedly. "... Just a group of motivated men and women."
"Motivated, yeah." Mostima snortled through her herbal delight and spilled some onto her shirt. "... Anyways, there's not much to say, Miss. Boring politics, in and out of Laterano. I get to spin the globe, I guess, but…" She gestured vaguely, neither happy or not. "... It's alright. Terra's not all that. Kazdel, we all know how Kazdel is… I guess there's Lungmen, too? But Lungmen's not some magical problem solver either, it's as much of a backwards gutter as any other paint-brushed hovel."
"Seconded." Andy raised his teacup.
"There is some freedom to being a Messenger, sure. Some , but it's really not the bedtime story they sell to every home-stuck child. The bureaucratic ins and survivalist outs, the never ending chase, and the disregard of your person once you lay your cards outright… It takes a toll. It makes you want to throw everything away and just ditch, sometimes. And it's not like I'm some holier-than-thou Saint when it comes to my workplace practices either, no. I'm actively prone to ditching."
She took a sip. It was a sweetly mixed blend of black and green tea that Miss Niederhauser had poured them, and neither could complain about the flavor. It was quite gentle on the taste buds, very potent on the brain. If only the sweetness could wash away the past seven years and leave them gripping to those warm, Lateran summers spent in detention…
"... And that's about the gist of what I can tell you. We have our work secrets too, Miss Niederhauser."
"I see." She observed the two curiously, as if seeing such critters for the first time in her life. "... I assume you weren't quite as interested in a Lawful job as Mostima was, Andrew?"
"Wuh?" He blinked, halfway through a sip. The series of coughs and violent retches that followed could've very well been the thundering assault worthy of ripping his lungs straight from their fleshy kingdom – but alas, they prevailed. Once his windpipe's been cleaned thoroughly of any sugary residue, thanks to Mostima's helpful slaps on the back, Andy regained his footing. Or sitting, rather.
"What do you mean, "not interested?"
"Not interested." Her eyes narrowed. "I don't see you donning Legati regalia, Andrew. Come to think of it, I don't see Mostima wearing anything that screams "woman of the Law" either, but it's just a given of the job. But you? You went to play Saints and Devils in Kazdel."
"I didn't go there to mess around, Miss." He dimmed, "I went there so I could be like what Mostima is today."
"Did you, really?"
"Yes? I told you about our financial mess…"
"You and your father's financial mess would've had little to do with the path in life you'd have taken." The woman scoffed, throwing a loose flock of hair from one shoulder to the other. "You and I both know it doesn't require anything but hard work and dedication to score a hefty scholarship, and the matter of your doing wasn't whether you were poor or not, but whether you'd actually put in the effort."
"..."
"And? And you tried the easy way out." She almost shrugged at his saddened eyes. The sight made her own peepers soften lots, and she kept speaking. "... And the easy way out panned out into something, for sure. Something, we can all see what. You silly, stupid critter, you."
"But at least I made it…" Andy huffed, nose buried in his teacup. "... On my own terms, too…"
"I won't even comment." Miss Niederhauser chuckled, "Your own terms took your arm away, child. Weren't you officially given a funeral, on top of it all…?"
"That was a hoax."
"I realized, yes. Way to soap one's eyes, I suppose. But, all in all… oh, well. I guess it could've been worse." She took a longer look at the two, sinking in their shared pity. "I suppose I'm just an old and… and stuck-up woman who's not exactly as up to date with the times as you two. I mean, I do have to hand it to you, you've seen a hell of a lot of Terra. More than I'd ever dream of seeing."
"Oh, well…" Andy glanced at Mostima, and she returned the sour look. "... Maybe the less desirable parts of it."
"Desirable or not, it's still a part of the experience." The headmistress smiled, leaning forward in her leather-struck chair. "... And at the end of all those undesirable experiences, you two managed to find each other all over again, didn't you?"
"...?" Andy blinked.
"...?" Mostima followed, staring blankly at the woman's softening lips.
A sultry flavor to the air had slithered through the cracks in the comfortably lazy office, quickly shrouding the moment in a glimmering mist of sudden realization.
"Oh. –"
"Oh, no–..."
"No, no, that's… No, Miss, we're not…"
"Yeah, no… no, Miss Niederhauser, it's not…"
"It's not like we're… you know, like that."
"Yeah, no. No we're not like that. We're, I mean, we're…"
"We're far from, uh… that . We've never been like that, so…"
"Yeah, no, we're not that."
"Yup. We aren't."
"Yup."
.
"..." She leaned into her cushy chair, a finger tracing curiously over her lips. "That's strange, actually. I've always sort of pegged you two for… Oh, you know. Pardon that strange curiosity and my poke-y nose, but whenever you two landed together on my doormat, dragged in by Burk, it hasn't slipped my mind once that there was absolutely NOTHING going on behind the scenes with you two. From the way you bickered, to the way you were always so inseparable…"
"Well yeah, 'cause misery likes company…?" Andy quietly pointed out.
"And how touchy-feely you two were…"
"I used to smack this dumbass over the head with books, Miss Niederhauser. That doesn't exactly spell "LOVE" to me…" Mostima muttered.
"And how you just couldn't keep your eyes off one another…"
"Scowling and growling? Not very affectionate…"
"And how it always, somehow was you two. Not a single other pair like you in the entirety of Saint Lucia's, ever again."
"Well, yeah." Mostima smirked. "I was number one, he was my number two."
"The opposite." Andy nudged her in the ribs.
"Oh, this or that. Just admit to it, you two." She pursed and flicked, a hand girlishly grazing through the air. Seeing her all smiles and youthful, Andy couldn't help but beam as well, for the sight brought him a homely change of pace in the sprint of today. "Just a little "Of course you're right, Miss Niederhauser, of course you've seen right through us from the very beginning." It's not something shameful, is it? You can just admit it."
"I wish…" Andy sighed a dreamy sound, flicking his gaze to catch Mostima's unamused eye roll. "... What, don't you? Not even a little?"
Mostima shook her head, nearly spitting her tea again.
"Me? Hell no. HELL no." She chuckled. "My type's usually a little more effeminate, y'know. To be fair, you're pretty much already getting there, but there's still something missing." She kept on warbling, sizing his soft features. "Something crucial, Drew."
"What? An arm?"
"I mean… That too, but not only. Something else. Something biology would've taught you. 'Cause I don't suppose you've had much luck with the ladies in Kazdel, no? Oh, no, wait. No, you had your "cockroach" girl, or whatever. My bad."
"She wasn't…"
.
THUD.
.
Everyone present jumped at the bellowing sound of a fist crashing against the door. Someone apparently had made it their life's mission to plow through the hundred year old slab of wood at its frame, and they kept hammering away at the poor object. Andy and Mostima exchanged an asking glance with Miss Niederhaused, who seemed just as shocked and perplexed as them.
And then the door-basher spoke.
"OPEN THE DOOR! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE, MOSTIMA! AND YOU, REIFF! I KNOW YOU'RE BOTH IN THERE, AND HELP ME LAW IF I DON'T BRING THIS ENTIRE DOOR DOWN TO GET TO YOU!"
Andy knew who it was. Mostima knew who it was. Miss Niederhauser remained clueless.
"Excuse me, do you know this person?" She asked them twice, for the first time remained unheard over the constant drumming of door-battering.
"Yeah, it's Fia…" Mostima sighed, sliding off the chair and stretching in a very Feline manner. "... Fun times' over, I guess. Up, up, Drewie."
"Yeah, yeah…" Andy let himself be pulled to his feet and stretched like a wringed towel. "I'm sorry Miss Niederhauser, but my criminal past is catching up to me."
"Your what?"
"My criminal past. My criminal past is banging at the door."
"OPEN UP, RIGHT THIS INSTANT. I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, BOTH OF YOU!"
A thundering round of bangs cluttered the room.
"OPEN UP! I'M TIRED OF RINSING AND REPEATING THIS BULLSHIT EVERY FEW WEEKS! AS YOUR HANDLER AND GUARD–... What am I even saying? Why am I trying to be professional with you two?! Just open the god-damned door!"
Fiammetta seemed considerably annoyed with her current situation, an outlet for which was the continuous door violence. Miss Niederhauser stood from her seat and approached the rattly driftwood (deemed driftwood because of how loosely it swam in its hinges), and Andy hooked Mostima's jacket over her shoulders in their solemn preparation.
"Excuse me, who exactly is this? Who's threatening to bring my door down?" The headmistress spoke sternly, and the banging subsided.
"... Excuse me?"
"I'm waiting to be excused first." She scoffed. "Who are you, and what do you want from my door?"
"..." Fiammetta audibly shrunk in her embarrassed silence. "... I'm a Legatus from the Basilica, and…"
"And?"
"And… And I've deduced, based on prior experiences and set-in-stone evidence that your room might be housing my partner who's gone rogue, and a wanted fugitive, and…"
"And what "set-in-stone" evidence might that be?" Miss Niederhauser raised a brow, then turned to check on her rascals. All dressed up and prepped, they beamed her a pair of warm smiles from the opposite side of the room, hogging both sides of a window. Mostima flicked the handle around and swung it wide open, filling the space with the low hum and bustle of the Bloat's ongoing, never ending glee.
"It was, um…" Fia seemed to have lowered her voice a little. "... Excuse me, who exactly am I talking to?"
"The Headmistress of Saint Lucia's."
"The Headmistress…?"
"I'm still waiting for your explanation, young lady. The school's closed around an hour thirty ago, you're not only trespassing over private property, but also nagging me with seemingly no reason."
"Well, the reason is that… the- the evidence, the evidence is that I was, uh… I was alarmed by–... Given the history of my partner, and-..."
"You're being very unclear." Miss Niederhauser snarled with a blood-freezing amount of cold. She turned excitedly to Andy and Mostima, seemingly awaiting praise for her dramatically terrific performance. The two, tying a rope from Andy's jacket and sweater, nodded rapidly and displayed a thankful fanning of three thumbs towards the sky. "Very unclear, and very unprofessional. I'd have expected better from a supposed "Legatus."
"..."
Fiammetta lost her tongue.
"..."
"..."
"Look, miss. It's my job as a Legatus to bring the suspect in for questioning, and… and given their shared history– , I mean, the suspect's and my partner's, it leads me to believe that they might've ventured into this building, as I've been relayed by a pair of children rapidly exiting through the main gate, both of them in clear states of high distress…"
"Are we taking crying children's words as actual evidence now?" Miss Niederhaused leaned lazily against the door, examining each of her nails with a sly smirk, so very detached from her stern and commanding voice. "Why not take the slurs of the drunk into account when fixing murder cases next? Maybe ask the fowlbeasts for directions while you're at it."
"... Damn." Andy muttered quietly, nudging Mostima in the ribs. The girl, busy with securing the jacket-rope in place, shot him a look. "... Your Legati-buddy's getting flamed heavy."
"Yeah? Duh." She smirked. "I'll make it up to her someday. Now hold this, and don't let go. Even just think of pulling a prank, I'll freeze your heartbeat in place until I'm down to floor level…"
She threw him the hawser and swung a leg over the window's sharp edge.
"Alright~? Clear?"
He ran his eyes over the messy string of fabric, gauging her chances of survival. Deeming them high enough, he nodded.
"Crystal."
.
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"Look, Miss Headmistress, this is a dire situation in an urgent matter of resolving, I really can't be entertaining your whims based on… on what, on prejudice towards children's testimonies? I'm doing my job, and I'm doing it to the best of my ability."
"When you spend enough time with children, you realize they're quite the tattletales." Miss Niederhauser entertained Fia with a fabricated scoff bursting with disdain, though behind the closed door, she could barely keep herself from chuckling. Seeing Andrew on the other side of the room, with a boot on the wall and one (and only) hand clutching the rope desperately, huffing and puffing beneath the weight of Mostima and both her staves, made her stern facade all the less believable. "There is a tremendous weight to a word spoken by an adult, Miss Legatus. Children? Not so much."
"That's a very bleak outlook to have for someone who works primarily with children!" Fia yelled from behind the door. "And I know those two are in there! Why are you trying to hide them from me?"
"I'm not hiding anyone."
"Yes, you are! I can hear Reiff heaving!"
"Hear that, Andrew?" Miss Niederhauser had trouble spitting the words from between her uncharacteristically girly giggles. "Heave quieter, she's onto you."
"I'm not… I'm not heaving!" He threw back, wrenching the rope with great effort. "It's just that she's heavy! And one arm's not helping!"
"I'm not heavy, you twig!" Mostima yelled from outside the window. "Pump more iron back home! Inject yourself with something, I dunno. Get a prosthetic, you bum."
"Hear that?" The Headmistress tapped on the door. "He said he wasn't heaving."
"Help me, Law…" Fia slammed something hard against the wooden slab, and it reverberated through the entire room. Andy gauged it might've been the butt of her trigger-happy peacekeeper. "... Do you seriously want me to run back and pull a warrant from the Pope?!"
"A warrant for what, exactly?"
"A search warrant!"
"Eh…?" Her eyes narrowed, gauging Andy's Mostima-lifting progress. Satisfied enough with their half-assed escape, she clicked her tongue. "Won't be necessary, I suppose. One child's already halfway out, so you'd be grasping at nothing with that little scrap of yours."
"So you DO admit they're in there?!"
"They're closer to being OUT of there, Miss Legatus."
"You… Open the door! Open that damn door!"
.
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.
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Away from it all, Mostima pranced softly on the school's innermost marble-layered backyard. She tugged on the rope, summoning the curly storm of gray poking from the window.
"You good?" He asked, to which she flagged him with a finger gun.
"All good, all fine." Arms up, she beckoned him forth with a few flicks. "Now you! C'mon!"
"..." Andy stared at her eager eyes, with nothing but a blank puddle of gray. "C'mon", and do what?"
"Whaddya mean "what?" Jump, dumbass."
"Jump?!"
"Yeah!" Her look glazed over with incredulousness. "What else were you planning to do? Have Miss Niederhauser lower you?"
"No?"
"Then jump!" She grinned widely, urging him with her hands. "I'll catch you, c'mon. Pinky promise."
"I can't even reach your fingers from here!"
"Yeah? Do you need to?"
Their eyes met.
Sure, there were clouds of the strange and the unknown, grazing lazily around the pastures of her cerulean blues, but the familiar sun beamed ever so bright from behind. So bright in fact, that Andy couldn't help but squint at how home-y and familiar her eyes made him feel. Whether it be the longing for a respite, or a desperate need of being, the feel of his fingertips sliding along the window's edge, or Fiammetta's violent door assault, something muffled the turbulent noise in favor of a gentle whisper. And the whisper consisted of just barely a sentence.
"She's still her, she'll still catch you."
And that's all he needed to hear at the moment.
.
"Yup, like that… One leg, two legs… Throw me the ropes, I'll hold onto them for you. Yup! Now you! Show me what those wings of yours can do, c'mon."
.
Mostima held out towards the sky, and soon caught herself an armful of Andrew Reiff.
.
"..."
.
"..."
.
The two of them glanced around the empty plaza, before their gazes found each other. The position Andy's found himself in wasn't the most conventional to say the least – quite the opposite. With his legs swung loosely around one of her arms, his back held by the other, an arm of his own wrapped around her neck in a vice grip, it couldn't have been anything less but "bridal" in a certain way, with Andy playing the role of the pretty lady on her supposedly "happiest day ever."
And yet, neither let go. They remained like that, blinking blankly at one another like a pair of chameleons.
"... Ow." Andy mumbled, having finally come to terms with the landing.
"Ow. That was an "Ow" and a half." Mostima pointed, her tail drawing lazy eights behind. "You're pretty light. Been skimping out on food, I assume."
"I wasn't skimping." He scoffed, reaching to pull his wallet. Upon opening the cash compartment, a few flies and dormant spiders hopped from within and scattered. "There's nothing to skimp with in the first place."
"Wow." She watched the bugs' daring escape. "Safe to assume that "Pacific Whatever" company you mentioned earlier is doing amazing, then?"
"Breaking the ceiling with stock prices. Total monopoly." He muttered, dejected. "... Can you let go? How– How can you even hold me up for so long? I'm not that light, I've got my gun and lead on me."
"Yeah. Fallen benefits, I guess." Mostima swept her arm from beneath his legs and allowed a gentle fall, then pulled her hood back to cover her less desirable features as he steadied himself. "You know how those Goliaths are, right? You'd know, with your "cockroach girl", no? Was she a Goliath? Not like you'd stick it into a living corpse, I'm guessing."
"Piss off…"
"That." She tapped him on the side, then pointed towards the window he had just so brazenly leaped out of. "We should both do. Dunno how long that door's gonna hold, but we oughta both piss off before Fia catches wind of our tracks. Y'know, keep stringing her along."
"Right, jail time." Andy, with a little help, untied the ropes and slid into his usual attire. The clothes reeked of memories and warmth. "Any idea of where to next?"
"Got a few."
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She put on a knowing smirk, reaching out to grasp his hand.
.
"I feel like shooting something, I think. You up, Drewie?"
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Andy grinned back and grasped her hand tight.
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"Always."
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In a barren sanctuary of vast knowledge and idyllic peace, a keeper of wit reigned on a throne of hit leather, rich in woolen folds and the finest of porcelain. Her lips enclosed around the brim, leaving just the barest smidge of a gentle pink staining the teacup.
Miss Niederhauser took a small sip.
.
"Good kids, they were. Very good kids, even. Amazingly polite, those two. Always saw them in the halls, never avoided a smile and a happy "Good day, Miss Niederhauser." Sure, they did get into some trouble from time to time, but let's be real, who doesn't? Besides, the times were different back then. People were different, standards were different, and the general mentality of the "here and now" was different as well. Especially so between children, with how much attention they put to keeping appearances in front of elders, with how much they cared about abiding to a suffocating dress code and savoir-vivre rules. Nowadays? Children nowadays, Miss Fiammetta, are like a grazing field of burdenbeasts. Big, loud, drooling and doing whatever in front of anyone and everyone. With no sense of respect for the older man or woman, mind you. Doesn't that sound like a burden-beast, Miss Legatus? In my eyes, it does. My ears, rather. It does sound a whole lot like that…"
"... Please, just open the door, Miss."
"... Perfect match, those two were. Beautiful times, when the sun shone a little brighter than it does today. Or than it will tomorrow, for that matter. Time is one hell of an enemy, don't you think? One night, you could be sorting through secretary applications, next, you're the head of Saint Lucia's. You're in your fifties, pushing sixty, and you do nothing but reminisce about a Laterano that's already gone over the horizon. It passed with those sunrises. It's all gone. All gone…"
"Miss, please…"
"Ah… Ah, dear Miss Legatus Fiammetta, enjoy your youth. Enjoy your youth, don't fret over growing old and wrinkly. Sit back and enjoy it all."
"..."
"... Are you sitting, Miss Fiammetta?"
"... I am."
"That's good."
"..."
"... How about another story, then?"
"Miss, please…"
.
.
.
And the windswept wheatfields of Laterano's outskirts bathed them in gold.
.