Pain of the Past (a Preminger fanfiction)

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Blood, piss, and beer ran freely through the cracks in the floorboards as Preminger jerked the old mop back and forth. The nighttime was leering at him from the window, held back only by a candle flame on the countertop. In the dim light, a cocktail of wretched fluids gleamed against the floor.

Moments like these, when he was alone with the stale smell of drunk sailor men, Preminger almost missed the mines. Almost.

He'd stagger back to the inn where they took residence, a lonely shadow against the powder dawn sky. The days had begun to blend together already, a stream of late nights and slept away summer mornings.

It payed the bills. A small savings pile was slowly accumulating. But at the end of the day, Preminger knew the redundancy was slowly grating away at him.

"We need a goal, some kind of game plan," Nack insisted on the matter. He had adapted rather quickly to the working world, regardless of how humble pay a delivery boy made. At least it was honest work, Preminger reasoned.

"Yeah," Nick agreed, bobbing his head in the late afternoon sun. "What he said."

Preminger groaned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he prepped himself for another night at the tavern.

"Look, Preminger, all I'm saying is that its already been a few months." Nack continued, leaning up against the splintered window frame in the corner. "We've got our feet in the water, we're making money. It's time to start thinking a bit bigger, what's next?"

"What do you mean what's next?" Preminger replied, slipping into his only fresh pair of trousers and his last clean shirt. A visit to the launders was well overdue.

"I mean what's the plan? You can't tell me you're planning on mopping up vomit for the rest of your days!"

A smile graced Premingers lips and he gave a light chuckle, casting the twins an arched look from across the room.

"I hate to disappoint you boys but this is what real life looks like. We can't all be bandits on abandoned road ways or royal knights for the king. Most of us settle for actual jobs."

"Preminger," Nack moaned, a look of exasperation evident on his face. "The whole world is at your fingertips right now. We have the chance to do anything! Fate is calling!"

In a stride to the door, he called back over his shoulder, "If fate really want's my attention, it'll have to smack me in the face."

It wasn't that he was uninspired, or that he felt his destiny rested in a bar, it was that he considered himself a realest. It wasn't ambition that he lacked — quite the opposite, really. Preminger desired a simple life.

It was what his father had built for himself, or attempted to at least. A wife and a son and a farm to run each morning, a community that cared, a healthy and nourished case of simple living. Naturally, not everything worked out, but perhaps where his father had failed, Preminger could succeed.

There was nothing wrong with desiring a simple life, and the best way to get there was the honest path, or so his father had once taught him.

For years in his youth, he had fixated on his father's dying words, obsessed with the idea that he was destined to carve for himself a life of greatness. But those were the dreams of a naive young boy, Preminger was a man now. He could think of nothing more fulfilling than a life built on the foundation his father had laid down for him.

So, yes, he had a grand plan. He was going to work hard now, save his money, perhaps fall in love and find a family. He'd go back to his fathers farm and he would purchase the land with the money he'd earned, and he would be the stronghold in his community that his father had once strived to be.