BELLRAM V01 - Ambivalence of Light and Shadow I

BP001-P45 - The Violin's Violence 3

Meia sat up, clutched her legs and buried her face in her sleeves. A low beeping sound was in her thoughts. Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed like this. She could not tell for sure. The longcase clock was broken and only ticked on the spot and the alarm clock had disappeared.

All of a sudden she heard footsteps. Several people came running up the stairs. It sounded like heavy footwear. There was a metallic clatter beneath the footsteps. It was the sound of full weapon belts. She stared at the door. The footsteps stopped right there. Her breath quickened. The handle lowered. She gripped tightly into the fabric of her pants.

The door opened. But stuck after a crack on the porcelain shards.

The person tried to jerk it open, but then it got stuck completely.

"It won't open."

"Go up. I'll handle this."

"Understood!"

Meia heard two people starting to run off. Directly afterwards, a hand reached through the gap, grabbed the thick board and started to push the door open. The shards scraped across the stone. The porcelain cracked and wedged itself firmly under the wood. Tiny splinters burst off. The shards offered all the resistance they could muster and became more and more the further the door opened, but the only thing that changed was that the upper part of the door bent. The person was strong enough that the shards could not slow it down.

A man with a greasy haircut became visible behind the board and the door opened at the speed he came into the room. The man wore carpenter's trousers and a whitish sailor's shirt. On his weapon belt hung a falchion without a scabbard. His shoulders were so broad that he barely fit through the door, and his head so high that he had to duck. He spotted Meia immediately. Shards of glass crunched under his black leather boots. A shadow of white light reflected off the silver blade and scattered into countless coloured sparks through each of the shards it struck. Little spots of rainbow fell all the way under the table. The floor beneath his feet was a shimmering sea of shards. The man had a presence that silenced the noise and a demeanour as if he owned the room.

Meia stared at the man and he stared back at her. It had been like that since he had come into the room. Before he came to the table, he casually threw the cover with one hand onto the floor. Then Meia had only two zips and the falchion in view. On the sword was a striking decoration of light blue metal. It was sinuous lines that looked like waves, but it was meant to represent something else. This man was not a sailor. Meia knew exactly who he was. Otherwise she would most likely not have remained so still.

With one hand the man took the table aside, then picked Meia up from the floor like a baby, put her on the mattress and went down on one knee in front of her.

"Your leg is injured. Do you have any other injuries?", " Are you in any pain?", "Can I get you anything?"

The man asked many such questions, but Meia barely understood him. Each of his words rushed and rattled in her ears, like small stones in the drainpipe of a gutter. In the end, all that remained was a loud beeping. Had her hearing been damaged? Would it heal? Suddenly the man brushed her trouser leg up to well above her knee. Out of reflex, Meia squeezed her thighs together and was about to back away, when she realised that he probably just wanted to look at her leg. At the same moment she noticed something else.

"It's just a little scraped up. It'll be fine with the right plaster," he explained, followed by a sigh as if relieved, then he stood up and as he walked to the cupboard he continued, "And don't worry about that. I've wet my pants over less.".

Meia was still embarrassed, even if it seemed like he really didn't care. She lifted her shirt forward so he would see it less. She then looked at her knee. It was slightly scraped and bleeding a little. It was harmless. It had probably happened when she had thrown herself on the floor.