A House of Rifeland

A House of Rifeland

By H. A. Sasselli

(unedited)

Long-held was his ambitious lust for the girl of rosy lips. She kept her discretion in the House of Rifeland, a place far from the bishops and saints said to live helplessly in Triden. She walked ruthlessly in the grasp of the house; her skin rampant with the smell of men: a hideous odor of drunken wine that aged in regressions to leaving the sadistic and sequestered splintered woods and cracking stones that built an island of blood. This was home for those who wished snow to cover the sky when the likes of naturalness were to take form again. The blizzards would cover the eyes of God, or the watchers, or whatever hope of principle that one longed to keep an artless selective order, and that was just how the men of seas would want it: God could hear the thoughts of the vile, and that was not for the virtuous to wish for.

Johnathan Lynch was a man of principle, but he was enslaved to the house, not by acts of labor or the seamless rule that most would have for war, though through the harsh, warm, and unforgiving sting accredited to liquor. This place was perfect for Johnathan Lynch: a knight once to the King, giving his steel to the supreme throne when they declared worship to the Watchers and not to God.

There was only one inn, one bar, and one dwelling within Rifeland: a brothel by the name of The Cresswell covered by crumbling rocks and splintering floors that led down to the icy waters of the Leveranted Sea which divided every honorable realm. This allowed ships to rest by the feral land, and it helped the sailors find their way home in the brothel of wine, divans, and slumber.

Forever of slumber.

"Another of the cup there, John?" the taverner asked Sir Lynch. The taverner had a knack for keeping the men at the stools in lust for more. That's just how the rosy lipped girl was, always pulling at the drunkards' tunics as they stumbled to her red room at the farthest end of the hall. It must've been everyone's last stop until they sailed off from Rifeland's rock because no one had ever come back from her bed. John never had the courage to ask, nor the money to pay: his coin went to wine to drown out his fraught deeds. Bodies turn to coin. Coin drowns to wine. Wine heals the soul, if there ever was any left.

"Depends on what it will cost," John responded, his voice trailing out is segmented gasps. He'd always hated his voice; it was wrought with gurgled blood from a slit he had on his throat after striking a young boy and cutting up his guts. It was for his realms pride: for Sarandal in the Battle of Pigs.

Blood turns to coin. Coin to wine. Wine to the soul.

"On the house...if you tell me another one of your stories. Do you have more? A Knight's tale maybe?"

The two men beside him—both wrinkled down to some of their last breaths—anchored closer to the edge of the broken bar rest. The one to his right laughed wretchedly, his skin wrinkling so much of his eyes that there was no soul to peer into, "He won't say a thing! Knights never seem to remember the wars. Not after cutting a few bones in the process! Not a word from his mouth...not here."

"You misjudge the deceit of wine!" the one of the left had called, his skin overlapping with age, yet soothing. His face was covered with a grey beard of a sailor. "It's been two days on this rock and I'm almost out of tales to tell this man. This wine has aged quite fine; it would take a fool to turn it away."

The taverner smiled. He was the youngest lad of the whole brothel; his skin had not wrinkled, it had shined. Somehow, he seemed so ripe with knowledge. "I assume you'll be parting soon then, my son?"

"Son?" the bearded man croaked, as if he were mystified with the meaning of it. Horrified as his eyes widened and then found the way back to his drink. Red eyes, murky around black pupils. The man was afraid of himself: of all that he'd done. Within his goblet was a reflective scarlet mirror of sin; something never to be drowned away.