Tales From Sios: The Wishing Well Arc

Chapter 15: Elizabeth Gray

Janni 3, 4981vaxm
In the small town of Seceret in the Shimmering Plateau of the Onsain Kingdom, on the east side of town in the Growl Ward just outside of the PawPad Market. Early Summer.
Time: Midday

A cacophony of howls and barks filled the hot summer air as the citizens of Seceret went about their day with the PawPad Market a typical uproar as traders and merchants exchanged and dealt in the renowned Aiding Animals who serviced in support of humankind in the Shimmering Plateau for the last two hundred and fifty years. The overwhelming volume and chaos wore at Elizabeth's nerves as she cradled her one year old infant and bounced him in hopes to soothe despite the daily ongoing disturbance of noise. Her cheeks rosy from the sweltering heat of the cramped single roomed dwelling with her raven hair frizzled and a defiant clump pressed to her brow, crossing her face, forced her to try and adjust her hold on the baby to attempt to primp when she addressed her husband Charles, "I still don't see why we couldn't move to Neceret, they don’t have a beast market there. It's not too late is it?"
Charles looked up from a daily pamphlet, titled, 'Laststop Annually', his dark brown eyes squinting with youthful annoyance when he replied, "Sweetie, you said you couldn't live in Neceret because of the loyalties to the Arcane Tower Order that the Baron holds."
Elizabeth reasoned without missing a beat, "Well yes, in a backwoods town like Neceret there is no reason to pander the magical powers that be. Plus that proves they are shipping their young to the towers, probably for some form of government arcana funding."
Charles gave a lighthearted chortle as he gingerly shook his head while he pondered aloud, "Where do you come up with this stuff?"  
"Jenny at Ginger's Leaf Emporium agrees they are doing something strange over there in Neceret." Elizabeth ignored his question as she pressed her claim staring off out the lone window of the small apartment.
"Alright sweetie, and what does Miss Portwen have to say of the 'beast market' here?" His tone shifted patronizing her with nil respite.
Misses Gray immediately scoffed back at him, but a sudden rape at their door ended the spat. Only for the moment when a courier simply hand-delivered the reply her husband had awaited from the Laststop enlistment offices.
As Elizabeth suspected and feared, her husband was accepted as an enlistee of the Marquee Debarns' army out of Laststop.
"It is official, you're wed to a soldier now. First a Baronet and now a soldier of the greatest army on Sios. Your love knows no bounds!" Charles purred the way he always seemed to when he got his way, moving over to Elizabeth to swoon about her flaunting the message in a teasing manner, but she was not in the mood.
'Everything is just sex with him...' She thought as she pulled away from his playful flirtations, maneuvering their child as a form of barrier to stave his advance before setting her tone to denote the true gravitas of the situation, "Be serious, and try not to be too excited to leave your loving wife and your new born heir behind."
Charles cocked his head and twisted his brow in bafflement at her response, but wisely pulled back and changed his demeanor, "Sweetie, you know as well as I do that this is what is best for us."
"How could the best thing for us be that we grow apart?" She shot back, while bouncing the infant, softly in her cradled arm.
"Yes we discussed this, remember, it is far cheaper to live here and enlist in Laststop. My pay comes right here to you so you don't have to take up work and can just stay with Miles. I mean, all the men in Seceret do it." Her husband countered with recalled insight.
Elizabeth let out a defeated sigh, before lashing back with a final comment, "If all cheated or stole and you follow, your grave will be lonely still as well as hallow."
This caused her husband to give a playful smile as he calmly feigned conceding his won ground, "Alright, if your gonna quote Alfre'dotle at me I will bow my concession. I just won't go. Maybe Ill take up canine trading."
His smile stayed a smirk stain on his mouth until Elizabeth cured that ailment by bursting into a fuming tantrum of mild levity growling her defeat as she held their son out and demanded, "Here, take your son, enjoy your last moments with him then. I am going out."
Charles took Miles unwillingly, panic-stricken in his face, but before he could rebuttal she stormed away leaving his desperate calls to her of 'sweetie' and 'babe' to cut short when the sounds of the city picked up from a dull roar and she left their quint little apartment, with irritation swelling and the sweat dripping down her face as she slammed the door in her wake.
Although, in truth, Elizabeth knew her true frustrations did not lay with her husband, but it didn't sit well that he wasn't as shaken as her by all that had happened. Just last month she was fine dining in the Faze gardens as the wife of the baronet and future lady to the city of Faze, but the happenings with Charles' Grandfather, the disposed ruler of the now ruined metropolis of Etmere—that once ruled over the entire southern expanse of the Shimmering Plateau—and the Onsain crown left Charles' Father stripped of baronhood and removed from rulership over Faze which left Charles stripped of title and promise of land.
Now Elizabeth is Misses instead of lady and her manse a barren cube of living in what she and her other previous ladies of court would call impoverished-squalor-residencing.
Her frustrations brought her from the twisting alleyways up to the main road, deep into the PawPad Market where she listlessly strolled past vendor and animals alike, lost in thought, until she happened upon the town's Common Cup, where kids in bur lapped clothing huddled on the backside playing games with dice made from goat bones.
One child stood outside the grouping of kids at play; facing those coming up to the Common Cup with a small cast iron pot–the size of a typical dining bowl,–with several coins rattling around inside, all of them copper pieces. His enormous glistening eyes held stories of sorrow as his attire and skin showed years of hardship in the streets of Seceret, but a swollen lip and, an albeit innocent, smile—despite his own shame—held hopeful on his young features.
Elizabeth returned his hopeful grin, but hers showed guilt and pity, something he did not seem to grasp, for he stepped up to her and said, " 'Ello pre''y misseses, you's able to lend a fingers so me's lil' bruva can get some meat in hims bellies? We ain't ate in days, missesesess." The boy began pleading with her, holding the tiny black pot outward with a small, malnourished and quaking hand.
Her hands shot up, reflexively, to her breastbone where they interlaced as her face held unbridled sympathy for the downtrodden child and her heart broke in her features.
"You poor little thing.. Where is your brother? Where are your parents sweet boy?"
The child was little remised by her questions when he responded, "Me bruva is at 'ome. Me parents dead. Them was consumed when flowers last bloomed. Can you spares us a finga?"
The boy explained before pressing his need once more.
"That's horrible!" Her shock and horror held in her tone before she answered him, "I don't have coins with me today. I can bring you back food for you and your brother though. Pray tell, what consumed them?" Her sympathetic demeanor switched to morbid concern when she reasoned her lack of possible charity, for now, to the young boy.
His mannerism changed too, but at her words, as he instantly turned from her, adding, "Me needs coins not words."
An elderly man shuffled past in the crowd behind them, allowing the boy to steal away as he begged to the man who gave a sneer before he shoved the boy away from him, forcing him back to catch heel on uneven stone, knocking him to the ground where the black iron clattered and the coins shot in the air to fountain-pour down around him.
The chaos ensued about the boy as other children came running from all angles to snatch the loose lost wealth as the downed child writhed and lashed on the ground trying with all his effort to recollect all that had fallen. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was reeling; going from the older man who didn't even stop after knocking the boy over, to the child fighting tooth and nail to scrounge up his day's effort.
"Those are his!" Her shrilled voice cried as she jumped in the frey, attempting to snatch a copper before a young lad—around her age—could get to it, but after she pushed him out of the way, he sent his bare foot into her side before she could collect the piece, sending her tumbling into another group of frenzied passerbys. When she got back to her feet, the young man was already gone and by this point most of the struggle had dissipated, leaving the boy and her alone in the fallout, with a rogue lone leather shoe unclaimed between them.
The child had tears welling in his eyes as his face wreathed in crimson with anger and embarrassment while he picked up the empty pot and slammed the couple of coins back in its depths to rattle its echoed and empty defeat. Elizabeth started to comfort him as she came over, placing her hand on his shoulder, but the boy flashed on her as he tore away screaming, "I needs coin, nah' pi'y!" She slowly lowered her arm at that, while the boy was running up the main road. Liquid sympathy shedding to dribble off her chin once he was well out of view.
She had only been gone about two hours—based on the number of bell tolls from the northern part of town—when she made it back to her simple apartment, and while still standing at the threshold she found Charles attempting to soothe a distraught Miles at the other end of the small loft, to no avail. She caught his flustered look and returned it with an empathetic smile that melted her traumatic expression she held when she first came in. Immediately she moved to them, setting down a bundle of short knobby limbs she had gathered while out—after the debacle at the Common Cup—as she crossed the room and embraced them both.
"W-welcome home...love?" Charles managed after stammering his start as she tightened her hold at his words, and immediately he seemed to sense something amiss.
"What happened? Are you hurt? Who did this?" The puzzlement poured from her husband as his questions became more alarmed when he saw her approach all disheveled and dirty, but when she pulled back he noticed a deep purpled bruise on her elbow that cemented his concerns.
"There was a bit of a scuffle at the Common Cup, a beggar boy was knocked over and it suddenly became a mad dash for coins and i tried to help him, but a different older boy toppled me all over a silly bit of coppers. Its nothing really." Elizabeth divulged what she could recall, dismissively, but the look her husband gave as she released him and relieved him of child showed something carnal in his gaze when he questioned with a dangerous tone, "Which older boy? Older than you?"
Her head cocked, as she gave a sly smile before answering, "Dear he was about my age, and Im no lady any more, I held my ground. You should be proud of your beloved wife, not trying to seek some type of violence with a desperate young fool. And again would be over, but a single piece of bloody copper!"
While she spoke, berating him at the end, she undid her left strap, one-handed, at the shoulder to let free one perky and swollen-nippled breast to ease Miles by settling him with her milky nourishment. Althewhile, she chuckled at her husbands unfeigned chivalry, balking at his call to husbandly duties as she motioned for him to move out of the best seat in the house. Charles snapped from his glare and quickly stood, but he pressed a different matter with her abruptly, "Lizzy, were we not weening him?"
His question hung in the air for a moment while Elizabeth let out a reluctant sigh as she admitted, "Well yeah. We will. They really hurt, dear, and it genuinely is good for him. My mother once said, 'when they're two, solid food will do,' so we are going to do that." Her tone suddenly hardened as she figuratively put her foot down, though in all actuality she stayed sitting on the large leather, capped and cushioned seat with legs crossed in her partially undone simple cotton dress, with baby Miles pinning his little fist to his cheek while he peacefully fed.
"Dear, will you start a fire, I am famished." Her whispered words suddenly broke the silence and without any complaints, Charles set to her request. Within minutes a small fire burned in their quaint little pit, the tinder crackling its way to embers as she finished feeding Miles.
She stood up once he was finished eating and placed him gently in his pristine mahogany crib, being the only piece from their wealthy past that remained to them and seemed out of place in their shabby loft.
Once she had her sleeping babe covered and snoozing once more, she resecured her dress strap and went to help Charles with the food.
"You got him to sleep?" Her husband spoke with hushed glee coating his question.
"Yes, he is deep in the dreamworld now." She matched Charles' quieted vigor as she gave him a smile beaming with satisfaction.
The sun finally fell to the great siosen nightsky forcing Charles to break away to light there small dwelling with a few candles so they could continue cooking. Once he returned, out of nowhere, Charles leaned over the cauldron set between them on the dirt-covered floor—a cloudy liquid with floating hunks of bobbing potato chunks idly swirling its its surface—and planted his lips to hers in an unexpected, yet short, embrace.
When he pulled away, Elizabeth felt the rush flood her all the way down to her toes, and she greedily pulled him back in for more, before he could speak.