Chimney Smoke

i

Axel can't recall the last time he stayed somewhere longer than a month. Innkeepers give him a room with the price varying per town, and he's become used to moving around to preserve what little money he maintains. It's a life he'd rather hang himself than continue living, but it's a life nonetheless.

Axel is a contractor. He travels across the land, looking for any odd jobs that could score him another night's stay at the inn he's temporarily settled down in. And, while the life is full of unexpected twists and turns, he still finds himself in a bed every night, sore and exhausted from the day's work but, nonetheless, in a bed.

The life of a contractor is a horrible one, he's come to accept. There's no such thing as free time when he's working himself to the bone, nor is there money to spare for a nicer meal than tavern food. Every penny goes towards his own meals and shelter, every dollar he earns landing in the hands of the innkeeper or the bartender.

He can't help but feel scorn every time he wakes up, looking up at his surroundings. In his first glance, he can forget where he is and nearly imagine he's home again. But one look around the room usually chases away his hopes, putting him into a bad mood as he groggily gets up to get ready for the day.

He can't blame anybody but himself for what happened. As much as he knows who is at fault, truly, he can never place blame anywhere else. It was his insisting that he could leave early in the morning, long before her family were to show up, and it was his insisting that they would be fine.

Clearly, they weren't fine, or he wouldn't be outside in the cold every morning, far away from the only home he's ever known.

As Axel trudges through the muddy side roads of a town, he sighs as he looks around at his surroundings, pulling his jacket closer around him. Vine tendrils frame the streets from the weeping willows that loom overhead, blocking out the sun even more than the overcast clouds. The only reason he puts up with the horrible cold is the month's worth of work for a promised solid price, but even then he feels the cold breach his jacket.

"I'm here for a reason," he reminds himself as he walks onward to his job site. That reason is the only thing that motivates him to get out of bed in the morning, what pushes him to slide on his oversized boots and make the long trek at the crack of dawn.

He's here for her.

Somewhere eastward is a girl he promised he'd better himself for.

.o0o.

The sunlight pushes through the curtains, pulling Gianna back to reality as she opens her eyes. As she does every morning, she rolls over onto her side, looking at the empty space next to her with a partially hopeful stare. As always, she gets the same dejected feeling in her chest as she pulls herself up, turning away from the empty side of the bed.

It's been many months since he had left, but she stopped counting ages ago. Everybody in town has already stopped casting their sorrowful glances in her direction. Instead, she's become known as the loner in her family's great manor, haunting the halls of the ancestral home, rarely seen around town.

It's sad, but Gianna's grown to accept her life as it has become.

Her movements are soft, wispy even, as she pads over to the wardrobe next to her bed, pulling open the oak doors to pick clothes for the day. Pulling on a rose-colored dress and a white cloak on top, she heads to her wardrobe to fix up her hair. In the mirror, in the early dawn's light, her eyes wander to over her shoulder, where a chest lies next to the wardrobe.

Reflexively, her fingers tighten around the jade pendant she's halfway pulled off her necklace rack. The pendant was the last gift her lover gave her. A scraped up gift that he promised would be temporary, minutes before he was shooed off their property. Her father had warned her to stay away from him and his kind--a vile way to refer to the lower class. Gianna had only numbly nodded as she watched her lover disappear from sight, and then allowed her sister to pull her back inside, back into the gilded cage she called home.