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"The alliance.""...death of our country...""We will flourish...""... through marriage?""Surely absurd!"The words were a steady hymn in the streets of Esterham, singing its people into a trance from the docks to the Red Ruins. Each day, they grew more agitated and hopeful. The ones who understood it for what it was were rare and ambiguous, the ones who didn't were elated and the one who pretended they did were furious for the saw not the submerged iceberg but its rocky top. The Master was rare and ambiguous. He watched it all happen with the eye of an eagle, high and soaring seeing it all without truly ever revealing that it saw. He disappeared and appeared, each time more cunning, as if he were biding time, impatient saying goodbye to each passing second with his hands outstretched towards an hour in the distance. The hour he'd been promised. The hour this story would unravel.
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"Mrs. Albertil, this dress is absolutely atrocious! How dare you expect my niece to wear this?""How may I fix it for you then?" she asked, desperately trying to secure a customer. "You may not. We will be taking our affairs to someone else. Perhaps someone much more talented in the art of sewing than you."She had nothing to say to that. So, she graciously bowed and opened the door to let them out. With a huff, she walked out the door with her neice trailing behind her. Walking behind the counter, she sat with a quiet sigh. "They all act as if the only thing keeping the Prince from marrying their girls is their dresses.""Perhaps it is so. You can't expect much else from someone so vain. Or have you forgotten about the buildings he's burnt down?" asked her husband, sitting on a stool with his knobbled fingers intertwined over his belly. "We never saw the smoke, did we?" she asked, in a melancholy tone. "No," the husband shook his head in admission. "No, we did not, my dear."
"Apertum is two weeks away and I have not sold a single dress, yet. Maybe its time for me to step back."
"Maybe it is. But just hold on until the next customer."
She opened her mouth to argue, but thought better of it, and nodded instead.
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"It's crooked. A bit to the left," he said, from the ground.
"How much of a bit is it? Because the last time you said that, the ladder tipped and I broke my finger," he asked, making sure he wasn't adding another broken finger to his hands.
"You are hilarious," he replied back, without a single echo of humor in his voice.
"Okay," he said, fatigued from gripping onto the ladder tightly enough to make his body cramp. He reached towards the left and tugged onto the string. "Better?" The small flags on the banner fluttered collectively, as if the string had shuddered.
"Yes. Now come down."
He made his way down the rungs and jumped off the ladder, too far for him to comfortably land safely. But he knew he didn't have to worry about that, as the boy underneath moved to catch him, just in time. "This was what broke your finger. Not me."
"Ah," he said, as he stood, nervously brushing his shirt.
They both looked at each other, blushed and then upwards to examine their work. Strings with square sheets of cloth with a circle and five intersecting lines on them, zig-zagged overhead, like a spider's web. Sunlight filtered through in shades of baby blue, through the fabric and onto the cobblestones, as if the sky itself were melting and dripping onto them. This was the last street they needed to decorate, and now with their jobs done came a somber feeling shaped like a blade slicing through the banner strings that had tied the two boys together.
"Let's go get our pouches," said one of them. The other nodded as they walked under the strings of Caraca, that would trap them all like flies, if it fell.
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Author's Note: I know this is very short. But the coming parts are gonna be really long so...
chile. et votum comment.
come back soon for the next part!
love,
cora. ✮
YOU ARE READING
unraveled
Fantasy"I've seen rats with better attention spans than you," she said onto his face. And then the boy was there pulling her onto her feet and off of him. "But have you seen them with such beautiful faces?" he asked, standing up, brushing off th...
