The Seven

Chapter 9

Larkin waited for the call.

And she waited, sitting by the single phone in the house for hours after she got home, exchanging simple greetings with her family as they each arrived home. Her mother had sat down on the chair opposite her, and she and Larkin had discussed job prospects and what Larkin's role in the family would become. Both parents practically pretended that the previous night hadn't happened.

The phone sat on a coffee table next to the tattered couch, in front of a lamp that looked older than Larkin. It barely lit the room with a washed out yellow light, only visible for a couple of feet before darkness ate away at everything in sight as the sun set. The phone was yellow, and it had a rotary in the center, the numbers faded and the letters illegible. Larkin sat with her legs hugged to her chest, meandering through her thoughts, awaiting a phone call that she knew would never come.

"I'm proud of you, you know, Lark." Her father said behind her. Larkin nearly jumped, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder. He smiled down at her.

"You're a fast one, you know. Quick on your feet. I have no doubt that you're going to get that call in just a few seconds." Larkin smiled, knowing what he said was simply optimistic.

"Thanks," Larkin said. She turned back around, not wanting to let her emotional dam break.

Osiris's... work. My family's income. That girl's life. My own life. Everything's messed up. This is how I'll fix it, I swear. As soon as I get the call, everything will be fixed.

And that was what she kept thinking to herself. Whenever she wasn't cleaning, working on the house, or cooking, Larkin was sitting by the phone. Watching it. Waiting. She didn't play her violin anymore, for fear that she wouldn't hear the phone's ringing over the melody she was playing. Her bed lay made for days on end, quilts strewn over the couch where Larkin slept, afraid that they may call her late at night and pass up someone who wasn't committed enough to answer. I'm committed. I'll answer. When she was outside, she left the door open, not wanting the call to pass her by. She never wandered too far from that couch.

Seconds by the couch turned to days. Days to a week. One week to two, to three, to a month. 

And there Larkin stayed, never straying too far from the phone.

•  •  •  

Ten weeks had passed. Two and a half months. Larkin had stopped waiting by the phone weeks before.

In an effort to make ends meet, Larkin had begun playing her violin outside of the markets, her old winter hat sitting in front of her crossed legs as she sat on the dusty ground. Coins were a rarity in the hat, and the strings of her bow were worn and couldn't play the rich, velvety songs that she used to be able to in the privacy of her room. 

People in Outer Môraine didn't exactly have the type of money to be tossing coins into strangers' hats.

And people in Central Môraine didn't exactly have the type of compassion to stop and listen.

Instant gratification was more their type of entertainment, whether it was watching men from the rings of East Môraine beat one another to a pulp, or it was buying another man out of house and home. It made Larkin sick.

But, sick as their material desires made her, it was the only business to buy into that would reap anything even related to a profit. She had made Archer teach her woodworking and whittling while he wasn't away at school, and all the time she had on her hands had honed her skill into one passable to the untrained eye. Next to her violin, she kept and sold an array of wooden sculptures, medallions, and objects that she made whenever she could- it was the only type of cash she could bring in anymore, and despite their thin coats of dust, the fact that she sat outside of the markets meant that hers were first to be seen, and couldn't be compared to the objects produced by the skilled workmen who could actually afford booths inside the market.