Gajin

Chapter Two: Prismo Plum

Six years had passed since my encounter with the assassin. It had slipped into my recollection of dreams, where I was chased by massive tidal waves, attacked by faceless men, and forced to run my mother's tavern where I was overwhelmed by over-spilling pots and too many angry faces without chairs to sit on.

But today was different, this time I didn't wake up with a nightmare of a kitchen.

"Come down Alba! Your father wishes to speak with you!" My mother called, waking me from my luxurious slumber.

"On my way, mother!" I called back all too bleakly.

Down the ladder, my mother and sister seemed to have taken off to tend to the tavern already. I was left with my father and his stern gaze.

"Can't you wear something less...fitting?" He wondered, gesturing to my silky nightgown.

"Father, I just woke up, what do you expect me to wear? A cotton gown to bed?" I had to resist the urge to place my hands on my hips, "What is it you wanted of me at such an oh-so-early hour?"

I took his grunt as acknowledging my point about the nightgown and he laid a small scroll out on the dinky dinner table. On top of all the dust and the grimy paint-job, it hardly looked out-of-ordinary.

Our house itself was modest, dimly lit by oil lamps and walls of dark wood that made it even harder to see. My room was the small attic, its only entrance the creaky ladder that led to an even creakier door that you had to open inwards. The two remaining bedrooms were beyond the ladder, each one the same as the other, with only slightly more space than my attic. The rest of the house consisted of a small kitchen with a small sink, a small table with small legs, and a few small cabinets with small items adorning them.

What I meant by the scroll fitting in with the rest of the house was that it too was insignificant in size. What surprised me was with what care my father took in opening it for me to read. It was covered in oil stains, fingerprints, and ink blotches that made me think the writer had little respect for what was requested on the scroll.

It had a short list of items, apothecary items, requesting my father to deliver them to the docks.

I hadn't noticed at first, but the scroll itself crinkled and snapped as if it had been drenched in sea water.

"What do you want me to do with this?" I asked, too tired to correct my tone.

"You are to accompany me in delivering these items. I want you to meet Mr. Plum and his son."

This was about me finding a husband. Not too long ago, he had given me a hedging lecture about it.

"By the time you're twenty, you should be betrothed to someone. It's not like we haven't been lax about finding you a husband, but I want you to at least start trying to talk to more men in your life. The last man I saw you talk to was that boy on the street who you bought the turnips from, and he was hardly in the position to ask for your hand in marriage...selling food in those rags he was in..."

"I don't need a man to take care of me, Father, you know I'm to inherit the tavern or the apothecary by the time you and mother get too old to run the shops." I had told him.

But he didn't have it. And today he wasn't having it again.

"You will do as I say, Alba, and who knows, he might be just the sailor you needed."

I grumbled something about dirty sailors and pirates, but he was dead-set on me accompanying him to the trade.

Within the hour, I found myself holding a box of all the things having been requested from the scroll. Father took the crate from my arms and we weaved through the town square toward the docks. It wasn't a long walk, but every street twisted and contorted in a different way, making the trip a lot longer with passing carriages and guild boys trying to snatch items from my father's load.