▼ Zekiel

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ A Priest, A Doctor, and Two Cripples Walk Into A Church ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel decides that the gods have decided it is time for him to visit with Tacrith again and summons the healer to aid his sickly charge, whom he has dubbed 'Ottolo'.

Word Count: 2,441 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Lady of the Greens ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel seeks out a friend for introduction to his newest charge.

Word Count: 1,764 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Creepy Crawlers ▼

PRP WE: Link
Result: Zekiel re-encounters Malta, and some unusual wildlife.

Word Count: 2,227 || Posts: 9

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Please, sir, may I have some more? ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel is tossing breadcrumbs. He lures a man.

Word Count: 3,210 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ From The Jungles Dark and Deep ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel encounters Matchitemin at the city's perimeter.

Word Count: - || Posts: 1

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ For The Night Has Been Unkind ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Awakened by a feeling, real or imagined, of something foul afoot, Zekiel dresses in the middle of the night to chase a figment of instinct,
and finds Ottolo on the floor of his room in a deplorable state. He stays with and comforts him until morning.

Word Count: 4,359 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ The Ballad of a Dove ▼

“I-i-i-in…b-bed…with a foreign mainlander.”

Father Borath did not always sputter, but he did when he became especially excited, regardless of whether that be a positive or negative variety of excitement. Zekiel was admittedly more accustomed to the latter. The older man, in his mid fifties or so, seemed to often find the state of the world to his disliking, and now was apparently no exception. He stood red-faced, his short, dark purple curls in a tizzy about his features as though equally upset with the state of affairs, and the only interruption to his stare and sputtering came when he periodically chose to check his pockets, as was his habit. After one such inspection, his eyes lifted back to Zekiel, narrowing again.

“Do you. Realize. What this. Looks like.”

Zekiel, standing several feet before him with his arms held at his back, was smiling—if a soft, tilted and perplexed one. “Father Borath, I do assume it would look much like myself, laying atop the sheets of Ottolo’s beddi—”

“You-you-you-you…” The man simmered before him. “Boy. Do you think for one moment that this is a game to be—”

“Father…” Sister Mortrem’s voice was even, calm, and cool as it always was, devoid of emotional inflection as her stare, but it was enough to earn his attention. Her eyes were on Zekiel. “The boy has words to share, when you have reprimanded his behavior sufficiently.”

Father Borath’s eyes flicked from her, to Zekiel, back, and to him again. “Words, do you,” he said. “Little…” The man shimmied himself up, chin rising and shoulder setting back as though to hold himself at a new height that would somehow make the most of his four feet and one inch of vertical leverage. “Acolyte Zekiel has words. Well. Share them, then. Out with it. Off your tongue they go. Snap, snap.”

“I woke in the night, Father,” Ze said. “And my mind was awake though the moon was strung high in the sky with all the stars about, and my thoughts moved quick despite the dark, enough so that I dressed, and my feet and the gods’ will took me to where Ottolo—” Sister Mortrem’s eyebrows flicked upward a half nock, “—the foreigner was being kept just off the grounds, and I followed down the steps and into his room, and I found him upon the floor in the darkness with all his lanterns out though they ought to have been lit for he fears the darkness, and he ought to have been upon the bed—”

“So he had a fit and fell to the floor.” The older priest scoffed, pulling at the pudge of his beard, a single fist-sized tuft at the foot of his chin like bristly round bush.

“He had never had a fit before, father, and he hadn’t a fit this time,” Zekiel said. “His legs are broken and his bed large enough to keep him. I found him in his blood and in tears from his eyes, and in a man’s fluids—”

“Ah-cha-cha-cha-tch—in-in-in-in what?” Father Borath checked his pockets, frowning critically at the emptiness of his hands before nodding and then turning his attention back to Zekiel.

“His face had upon it—”

“I heard it, I heard it,” the elder priest sputtered, shaking his head. “But why do you say that, what do you know of it, how might it be, aha? It could have been anything. I splot of water. A bit of sweat. A dollop of dew…”

Zekiel blinked, and very briefly considered mentioning that he was at least fairly certain dew did not form on faces in rooms beneath the earth in the middle of the night. He opted against it, however, and said otherwise. “He told me this was what it was.”

“And you believed him? Sweet boy, this is. A foreigner. That we are dealing with. I will have you recall that before you continue.”

“I recall it, Father,” Zekiel said with a nod. “If you would not trust his word, might you trust mine? And have me describe it to you as I saw it, and as it felt upon my fingers, and how it responded to the pull of gravity and in what manner so you may be the better judge of what it—?”

“N-n-n-no! No, no, no…no.” Father Borath shook his head stiffly with a quaffle and a scoff. “No. Continue on.”

“That was upon him, and he could scarcely look or speak. By the light of my lantern I could see marks about his throat, dark blue, black, and purple with blood beneath the skin, and new, as they had not been before. He has had some new before but would not speak of how they came upon him then, and they were not so many or dark as this. Because he was in such a state, Father, and I could not leave him as he was, I took my coat from my body and I wetted the cloth of it and used it to clean what I could of him.”

Father Borath made a sound then. A soft, under-the-breath sputtering of his lips. But when he did not speak, gaze only bright and widely intent upon him, Zekiel continued.

“I used it, and I pulled his bedding from the cot, for it too, was stained with filth, and I turned his pillow, and I put him to the bed despite his pain, and I spoke to him, and left only to fetch further cleaning supplies so that I might mop the floor and wash the spaces I could so that the air would be more breathable for healing. He was hurting then, Father, and he spoke only softly for his throat had been held too tightly, and after I had cleaned the room, he told me of what had been done to him. That one of the hired help from this island who came to tend to him, Myuto, would hurt him, again, and again, and that on this night Myuto pushed his mouth to his geni—”

“That-that-that is quite enough! Zekiel. You. Expect me to believe. This. That a person of our blood. Would do such a thing. The word of a foreigner. Over one who was hired by the grace of our gods. To help him?”

“I expect nothing of you, Father,” Zekiel said. “Only that these words are my own and my truth.”

“Do you believe it, then?”

“I do.” Zekiel held himself still. “I saw what I saw, and it has convinced me. Ot—” Ze caught his tongue. “The foreigner has no reason to craft these words as a lie, and an easier time in our spaces to not speak them even as the truth. He spent many days and nights without sharing it.”

Father Borath, if still displeased, did at least appear begrudgingly convinced—or considering the situation. He checked his pockets, frowning, and then glanced to Sister Mortrem, murmuring something to which she made no reply, though her eyebrows rose again very briefly. Eventually, he puffed and returned his gaze to Zekiel.

“If this is all so, acolyte. What would you have us do? What punishment do you think would be just for this. ‘Myuto?’”

“I do not seek his punishment, Father,” Zekiel said.

Father Borath’s scruffy brow twitched upward. “No punishment?”

“I have three requests.”

“Requests.” The older priest puffed. “I do hope you know you are still on trial here, acolyte. Whatever your reasons may be, and true or not as they are, you were not found under permissible circumstances. Laying with a foreigner.” The man shimmied again, his face warming anew with a reddish tint before he began to appear to calm again. Zekiel waited. “Make your requests.”

“I request that Myuto, by whichever surname he carries with him if he does, be banished from the grounds surrounding the church and not be permitted within range of sight of the foreigner, that he never be paid with the coin of the church again for any task in any city on this island under our gods, that he might atone separate from our hand and heal elsewhere where he cannot lay hands on those in our care.”

“One,” Father Borath said.

“I request that I be permitted to seek out Tacrith of Pajore, a physician of our city who has paid time for the foreigner’s benefit before, and bring back with me a wheeling chair as there are in his healing halls, that the foreigner may be moved about in the air above ground and see the sun while his legs continue to mend.”

The elder priest narrowed his eyes, but did not immediately say anything other than, “Two.”

“I request that the foreigner be moved to a room above the ground with a window and sunshine. He has been kept long below ground, and it would benefit his health to see light and appreciate the dawns our gods bring to the world every day.”

Father Borath made a muted squawking noise, but took time then to turn his attention back to Sister Mortrem, speaking in quick, hushed tones. This time she answered. Slowly, but quietly enough that her words were not clear to Zekiel either. At length Father Borath gave a huff of a sigh.

“Three,” he said. “Do you have anything else to say for yourself?”

“Not in this moment, Father.”

“Consider your requests noted. I, Sister Mortrem, and a handful of your other guardians will discuss them and appropriate atonement for your behavior. We appreciate your honesty and drive to do well by others. Even…” He shifted his shoulders, shimmying his weight up again. “Outsiders. You are dismissed, Acolyte Zekiel.”

Zekiel dipped his head in a shallow bow. “Thank you, Father.” And, as directed, he stepped from the room.

He was, as promised, given later reprimand and assigned a number of hours of atonement: the long, tedious chores that would normally be passed to hired help or to prentices and younglings as chores. But he did not mind. He had never minded cleaning tasks, scrubbing the long halls, sweeping, dusting or rubbing down, airing out or washing laundry or dishes, mending—all of it needed doing by someone, and they were simple tasks that allowed the mind to think and wander while they were tended to.

Beyond that, it felt like contributing his part to the cycle, and if it was four or eight or twelve or twenty four hours of his days that they wanted him on his knees cleaning soot from stone or dirt from polished floorboards in exchange for bringing Ottolo to brighter circumstances and keeping improper people away from him, then it was more than worth the time. It could have been as many hours as they saw fit and still worth the task.

He heard word back quickly that he would be allowed, at least, to seek out Tacrith and attain a wheeling chair as soon as he found the time to between his other duties. The room, however, was a greater request, and necessitated a longer process and approval from more authority. Sister Mortrem spoke with him, though, and assured that she would at least ‘do what she could’ to see it happen.

Myuto would never work with the church again. And that, Zekiel found, was the most critical and greatest relief of all.

He smiled, humming an unbound and haphazard melody all his own as he worked his way down the stone halls, scrubbing, and thinking of anything and everything which came to mind to imagine, but in particular Ottolo, and how pleasant it would be to bring the boy into sunshine. The thought of the other boy’s smile and light from the open sky on his skin made Zekiel’s own expression bright, and his eyes warm with happiness, and hopefulness.

Better things were soon to come.

He had faith in that and could wait the time they took to arrive, however long that may be.

Result: Zekiel is reprimanded by Father Borath for rash behavior and being found under 'inappropriate' circumstances with a foreigner.
Zekiel accepts responsibility for his actions and agrees to atonement, but makes three requests on behalf of Ottolo.
Cast: Zekiel, Father Borath, Sister Mortrem, Ottolo, Tacrith || Word Count: 2,039

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Reinventing the Wheel (Chair) ▼
[ Slow Moving Non-Motorized Vehicles and Physical Therapy ]

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel approaches Tacrith with a request, and together the doctor and the priest get Ottolo out of his stone room and into new territory.

Word Count: 2,834 || Posts: 12

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ A Return To Morning ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel takes Ottolo to his new room.

Word Count: 3,039 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Moments In Winter ▼

PRP: Link
Result:

Word Count: - || Posts: -

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Sorrow’s Bodyguard ▼

“I won’t go back.” Kazrynn Nokks was a reedy little girl with hair such a deep purple it nearly looked black. It hung in short, uneven tufts dangling at lengths varying from just beneath her earlobe to just above her shoulders. She rarely met stares, her gaze evasive and often downcast or narrowed, but when she did meet one, her eyes were sharp—and frequently accusing. Her unspoken language of expressions and posture conveyed worlds more than she did with her tongue.

But these words were firm when she spoke them.

“Of all times to be adamant, child-” Sister Gammon stood to the left of her from Zekiel’s position behind both the sister and her other assistant, Khaeley.

“You’re stupid if you don’t.” Khaeley Masgrey was an acolyte, just as he was, but with a longer and sharper nose, narrower eyes, and a quicker tongue that said what she meant in such a way as it almost always felt upsetting to hear. But often it was the truth. She stood a good three fingers taller than he, and dressed conservatively, even in the summer months. “It’s just a little sister, and such accidents happen with new children. It might seem horrid now, yes. But in twenty months, you won’t remember your mother’s voice, and in another twelve-”

“Khaeley.” Sister Gammon had accompanied them both in attending to and delivering Kazrynn to safety after her running away. Now, she cleared her throat before composing herself and adjusting her shoulders back and chin up. “Acolyte Masgrey…if you would mind your tone in the presence of the child-”

“Get out…” Initially, Kazrynn’s voice was quiet in the room. Enough so that it took a moment of simmering down and listening before it could be distinguished, and by that time, she was already speaking with more force. “Get out—leave me alone, get out! Leave me alone, I want to be alone! You don’t understand, you don’t any of you not any of you understand, get out!”

As she uttered them, her demands built towards a shrieking, fever pitch which, for the moment, drove the now-wide-eyed Sister Gammon and — with more reluctance and only by virtue of Sister Gammon’s tugging — Khaeley, who cast the tantruming child a last, irritated and suspicious glance before allowing herself to be drawn from the room. The door shut behind them with a low clack. Zekiel couldn’t have said how long he stood where he did, first watching the scene unfold, and then waiting as Kazrynn’s screams dwindled and deteriorated from furied accusations and commands to screaming, to crying, to quieter, more broken sobbing.

And eventually sniffling.

She couldn’t have been but ten summers old at the most. Perhaps less. Zekiel might have guessed six himself, and though he had been present in the room for the full ordeal, he hadn’t until this moment spoken a word. Even now, he hesitated. He waited. Kazrynn rubbed the back of her hand under her nose, scuffing a foot to the marbled floor before turning her gaze his way. Brow furrowed, black-purple hair tousled, and silver eyes reddened under their dimmed glow from tears, she looked a sight without even beginning to judge the state of the rest of her. Zekiel wondered if her parents had the pennies for stitching to repair their children’s clothes, for it didn’t appear that they did.

“Go on, then…” she mumbled.

Zekiel waited, then tipped his head, hands unfolding before gesturing towards himself. “I am not meant to go also, am I?”

She nodded.

“Are you certain?”

They stood alone together in the empty room for a pause. For those moments, all was quiet. Kazrynn’s sniffling had eased to breathing. Outside the door of the room no one spoke, and the morning was a soft, dim yellow, filtered through several layers of curtains covering the only window in the room.

Finally, she shook her head.

“So,” he said, “you’re not certain?”

Another headshake.

“So you are certain?”

She shook her head.

“So you’re not certain?” he repeated.

“Yes…”

“You are certain?”

“No.” Kazrynn shook her head, her already furrowed brow pinching tighter as she puffed and eyed him, gaze skeptical. “I don’t know for certain, I said it myself, I don’t know where you ought or oughtn’t be, I don’t know you.” Her arms, already loosely folded, adjusted their fold, fingers pinching slightly at her own arms when she looked away. “I wanted t’ be alone, though, and they got out…” She eyed him, lips still pursed until she spoke. “Why are you still here…”

“I had thought,” Zekiel said, “that the gods wished for me to speak with you today. I felt I should when I saw you yesterday’s morning, and did not know I would have the sister and Miss Masgrey’s company. But now I do not, so…perhaps it is a lesson that on some occasions, things come about in the form we might expect at the end, but not always after following the manner we anticipated on the road to it.”

Kazrynn frowned. “You’re strange.”

“Some have said as much,” Zekiel admitted.

“They’re right.” Kaz drew a breath, hesitating before rolling her shoulders and setting them back with another puff. “Still dunno why you’re here. Don’t need your help an’ I’m not goin’ back no matter who thinks they have a piece to say about it. What do you want?”

“I want to help you,” Zekiel said.

“Said I don’t need it.”

“Sometimes the gods send aid even when it is not required,” Ze said. “To ease your journey.”

Kazrynn narrowed her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Don’t none of you understand! It’s not-” She stilled, biting at her lip and turning her gaze sharply away again. “It’s not all’s can be fixed with givin’ out more bread loaves at winter’s solstice or a warm thing to one o’ the kids who has naught. Isn’t nothing you understand and ‘m not going back. I’ll leave if you make me.”

“You are right,” Zekiel agreed after a moment. “I do not understand. But would like to. Would you tell to me what happened that upsets you and help me to understand it?”

Kazrynn studied him for a long moment. “The gods don’t care, so you shouldn’t. They ain’t never help.”

“If they did care, though, and wished to help, how would you recommend that they go about it?” Zekiel asked.

This didn’t appear to be the question she was waiting for. “It doesn’t matter—you don’t know, they’re gods, and they wouldn’t choose you to tell me anyway even if they did!”

Zekiel had heard it said that anger was sorrow’s bodyguard. A fiery, blustery counterpart that people used to distract themselves and others from the pains the gods assigned them, burying ache under anger and hurt under curses. The more he learned of his duties, engaged with those who came before him, and witnessed the sentiments and behavior patterns of those who sought the church's aid, the more he believed this was — at least for some of the gods’ children — true.

People hurt. And after they hurt they screamed and yelled and sought places to put the hurt or places to put the blame to lessen the hurt.

Kazrynn Nokks was seven years old, he learned. When he spoke with her, and began to actually glean information regarding her behavior and unbox her circumstances, he found that she was the first of three. She had a younger brother, and an even younger sister who had come into the world recently, and taken their mother in the process. She had run away from a small home several miles inland where her father sold feed and repaired tools for the locals. She believed her newborn sister was cursed, to have killed her mother on her way into the world, and wanted nothing to do with returning home to her remaining parent.

He had let this happen.

He wouldn’t listen.

He didn’t understand. Just as Zekiel didn’t understand. Just as no one understood.

Yet, after unfolding those portions of the story in bits and pieces, Kazrynn did eventually concede to speaking more with him, little by little. A sister of the church came in at some portion of the day to inquire as to their well being, but Kaz bid away other attention, and Zekiel clarified that things were unfolding according to their natural path and did not need added effort or interference.

Still, eventually the child asked: “Why do you think you’re special?”

Zekiel couldn’t have said how long it had been by then, the early morning having waned into day and the evening having left them to themselves to unwind the puzzle put before them. What exactly the puzzle was, Ze still couldn’t say, but he answered this question just the same. “I am not special. I only serve the gods as many do and have before me.”

“But that’s special,” Kaz insisted. “Only some get taken and then they get all the food they want and all the things and space and everyone thinks the gods listen to you and everyone else is left and-” Her fingers bunched as her shoulders rose. “If they were actually gods they wouldn’t need your help! They’d be gods! And I don’t! You’re all of you liars-”

As he spoke to her, Zekiel thought of the troubles she had come to face and brought with her into the church, and of the stories brought into the church not only by the citizens carrying their prayers and grievances, but by the children chosen by the gods themselves. When the opportunity arose again, he told her of some of his peers. Without the specifics of names or class identifiers where possible, he spoke of knowing persons who had been pulled apart from their siblings and families, of those who had been rescued, and those who suffered losses of their own varieties. He told her many within these walls knew what it meant to endure trials at the hands of the gods, but that each was given their own journey to walk and none could be exactly comparable to anyone else’s.

“Why are you here, then…” Kazrynn mumbled at that point, her voice hoarse about the edges from her previous outbursts. “Did the gods do you good?”

He studied her a moment before admitting, “The gods have always done me better than I deserved in life, but I am dutiful in attempting to atone for my inadequacies through service to their ends. I am like your sister,” he said. “I took my mother when I came into this world, though not from any siblings, as I was her only child, but…my coming was her going just the same. So each day I work to serve the gods and right what I took, though it may take a lifetime…”

She frowned at him.

He tipped his head, and then gave a small smile. “Your sister is so young still, there is no telling what purposes the gods intend for her, but though her life was costly, it is part of her burden already, just as it is yours. One day, we will all rejoin the gods’ cycle…but so long as we live this life, we must endeavor to treasure what it has given us and may give us in times to come.”

She eyed him for another long moment before lowering her gaze, foot scuffing the marble flooring. Zekiel, who had come to a crouch before her to speak nearer to eye level, stood now and extended a hand.

“Are you weary? We have beds here. And warm sweet-milk, if it’s been some time since you’ve eaten.”

Her gaze shot up then, still tucked beneath the safe harbor of lashes, but wide with barely-contained interest, and he waited through the moment of pause that it took her to weigh the costs and benefits of trusting him. Not long after, she extended her hand, fingers coming to a tentative perch within the cup of his palm. He lead her out. She slept within the sanctuary of a private room in the outer Sanctum until her father had been successfully contacted. In two days, he arrived to retrieve her.

She left having committed to memory a morning prayer of guidance, and gratitude. Though she had not spoken another word to Zekiel — or, so far as he had seen, anyone else within the temple grounds — she wandered near to the shrines he lit in the mornings and he witnessed, afterward, her critical observance of the statuettes inside.

When Kazrynn was retrieved, and departed from the grounds, Zekiel thought of Ottolo. While once, the man made appearances in his dreams, smiling and wanting of nothing more than reason to continue being happy, now he saw only his silhouette — the back of the man, shoulders framed by sunlight as he headed ever further away.

After some consideration, Zekiel resolved himself to a trip to the sea.

Word Count: 2,198

Quote:

Gradually, Zekiel is taking on more responsibilities within the Sanctum and, despite his passive nature, he has managed to begin honing his path and pursuing issues with the most personal relevance to him: working with children, and working with those gods have burdened with the most trials (generally the sick and poor). In this solo, though the task was not initially set on him alone, he was trusted when the opportunity arose with the task of consoling a seven year old girl who has run away from home after her mother died giving birth. Initially, believing her newest little sister to be cursed, the girl refuses to return home, but after venting and eventually speaking about her issues, Zekiel manages to hold a conversation with her. His message has both religious and moral/therapeutic components, but by the end of it, in the process of working through a discussion of loss with this girl, he recognizes his own recent loss and the need to come to terms with that himself.

The solo is meant to highlight both Zekiel's progress within his class and role in society as well as his personal growth towards gradually increasing self-awareness when appropriate and learning to make his own experiences and well-being part of his priorities.

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ No Stranger To The Rain ▼

Pttr-pttr, tip-tip-tip…

On the day the gods and his mother brought Zekiel into the world, water had fallen from the sky in droves. Jevan had spoken of it from time to time in the days before the Sanctum took Zekiel to serve. How the day had opened clear that morning with deceptive pleasantness — ‘that angry sea b-tch…’ — darkening only later in the afternoon, but then building to a maelstrom quick as a sneeze. How it spat grey bullets from the darkened heavens and tossed the sea against the shore in a whiplash, knocking his fisher’s boat about like a bobbling toy.

Jevan had not spoken often then. Or much, when he did. But his were the only words Zekiel had known for the first years of his life, and so he had listened, and listened. And sometimes, Jevan’s words still came back to him, playing through his mind between his ears.

It was a strange thing to hold onto, Zekiel thought as he dipped his thin lighting stick to the single candle to his left. Once it lit, he shared the flame with each of five more arranged in a semi-circle before him, framing a porcelain bowl within which a dark marble statuette of the goddess, Dafiel, stood upright next to a paler marble rendition of her counterpart, Lurin.

He was grateful every moment for the boons the gods and all of their chosen had given him as he’d grown. It had been the greatest blessing of his lifetime and remained so today, the day he had been chosen to depart from the cluster of coastal mud huts and shacks that comprised the fishing village of his birth and travel to Pajore, Yael’s capital, and the Sanctum within. The Sanctum was home, and the brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers of the church were his family. There was not an inkling of doubt in his mind of that.

But still, Jevan’s voice rang periodically through his subconscious.

It was early afternoon, perhaps three nocks past the height of day, but the weather made midday indistinguishable from late evening: grey, wet, and unchanging. All but immediately after his official ascension to cleric, he had requested and was granted permission for several days’ leave to visit the coast, and Yjorth. At least, that was one of the village’s names. It was so small that there had been and apparently remained to this day some disagreement as to its actual title, and it was too insignificant to the greater picture to be listed as existing by name on anything more official than hand drawn map instructions.

It was also no small hop from the capital, and did not support its own inn.

Fortunately, Marleya remained over a decade later, still in the same house and still willing to house him for periodic visitation purposes. He had sought her out when Ottolo began to heal, knowing that the Sanctum would not continue to extend its hospitality to an outsider indefinitely, and the aging sailmaker — now into her sixties, surely — had been pleased as ever to trade a space in her home and meals for the work of young hands and the company of others. Once a mother of many, she was especially receptive to arrangements which provided even temporary companionship—and surprisingly unperturbed by the concept of an outsider in a way that most likely would not have been.

After finishing his mid-afternoon prayer, Zekiel extinguished his candles, carefully set away each piece of the display where it would not be trifled with among the few other things he had brought with him, and stood. Overhead, sheets of rain clattering to the roof like tiny pebbles. Wind pressed itself between the house’s cracks making the wood groan, and he stepped to leave ‘his’ room—one of those which once housed Marleya’s sons in years past, as she had been quick to tell him. She had told him when he was five, too. Despite nearly fifteen years since the days he had initially toddled through her halls — few and small that they were, despite once housing more residents — it still looked, and smelled, much the same as he remembered it then.

The front door creaked.

He went to meet her, and in moments was aiding in carrying in her market purchases. Thunder cracked, white lightning splitting the sky overhead as he took the first wetted cloth sack of goods into his arms, and water splattered inward from the doorway, tracking in with them even after it’d been shut at their backs. At her tittering that he would ‘ruin his clothes’ doing such things, he was happy to assure her that his clothes had experienced wetness before, and besides, he was not dressed for church.

Though his clothes were clean and not frayed, which was more than could be said of some of the villagers, they were otherwise simple and modest. Ceremonial and title-signifying dress had its place, and social status a certain undeniable value in society for accomplishing certain ends—but it was neither the time nor the place to flaunt either.

“I did visit with Viisra this morning, though, as you suggested,” Zekiel said, setting his load where Marleya indicated and shifting the topic off of the one which continued to inspire her to brush at his wet sleeves and tunic. “Her baby is beautiful, and they were all very happy to have a ceremony and the gods’ blessings, even though she is already nearing her first year.”

“Ha—ah, I did say so, and that girl…” Marleya pointed a finger, gesturing it with emphasis before beginning to tinker with her purchases. Her grip, Zekiel noticed whenever she lifted anything, had developed a faint but permanent shake to it. “She was eyein’ that man of hers since she was such a small thing, years those two, little lovebirds they were even in the muck. They’ll do a child right.” Her lips pulled back, revealing a surprisingly well maintained toothy grin, though a number of the teeth were darker than they ought to be and several bent a out of line. “And more of those to come at their age still if this old lady were to guess, mmm? Be a blessed boy and fetch me my rolling tobacco…”

She reached, opening a drawer and drawing down a cylinder of spices. Her glowing grey eyes squinted at it, wrinkled fingers pinching the attached paper label.

“Are you hungry child?”

“I would eat with you,” Zekiel said, having stepped just out of the small square of space that was Marleya’s ‘kitchen’ and into the adjoining living/workroom where Marleya handled the bulk of any sewing projects not restricted to her outside utility shack. Atop a nailed-in wooden shelf and tucked just to the left of a thick spool of waterproof netting line, was the small rusting tin box containing Marleya’s tobacco and sealing paper. He fetched it down and took it to her. “If my company would please you, that is. It has been some hours since I ate, but Viisa and her husband were generous with their food despite having little, so I will be well enough for some time yet.”

Marleya’s knowing hum did not sound surprised in the least. She enlisted him in preparations for the evening meal just the same. Which, while initially a collective project, eventually became a exercise of her settled atop her kitchen stool, nursing puffs from her smoke and offering him occasional guiding instructions amidst conversation. They were simple tasks, after all, toting pots about and fetching cooking tools, ladling, pouring, and slicing, and his fingers were quicker and better suited to it; after only a handful of separate offers or unspoken assumptions of certain tasks on his part, she did not fight to remain the active driver.

As he worked, they spoke, and time became a fluid thing, then: all accurate measure of it lost to the lethargic tedium of smattering rain and meandering chatter spanning any topic either of them cared to introduce. As she had when he was small (and on the few occasions he had come to see her over the years), she spoke of her children, her late husband, her work, and the latest goings on of the village. Of Viisra, of frequent customers, of the storms they had had and a new skiff that one of the younger men had finished building from his own attempts.

But she also inquired into his own life. She asked about the capital and the Sanctum, about whether or not he was happy there, about his studies, his friends, his duties—and about Ottolo. It had been months since the man’s departure to the mainland. Yet, at the sound of his name it felt new and fresh, mere days since Ottolo’s presence had filled these very spaces, since his hands had aided Marleya with her tasks instead of Ze’s, since he had standing just outside of that very window in a stretch of dirt, first lifting his lance and then beginning to practice the most basic of maneuvers with it while he had the opportunity and as his strength built.

All after the time it had taken for him to walk again, of course.

Zekiel did not realize his hands hand stilled where they were — underwater, half-submerged in thin suds and holding a soaked washing towel unmoving over a dish awaiting the remainder of its washing process — until Marleya’s fingers touched to his wrist. He blinked and glanced down to her.

“Not expectin’ him back again then from the far yonder this time, ey?” she asked.

He was not prepared for the strange, unwelcome weight of finality that came to his heart with the question. It was not her fault. But in that moment, with the words in the air, Zekiel felt he knew for the first time with certainty that she was right. He lowered his gaze, studying the suds on the dish before him before recommencing a slow wipe and clean.

“I once knew he would return,” he said. “Once, I knew that his gods had sent him here to heal, and that ours had delivered him to me that I might aid him…” He trailed off. “Now, I know that he will not return, I think. You are right.”

Marleya did not speak immediately, but after a pause filled only by rainfall, she nudged him with an elbow. “You be careful with that lost look in your eyes, now, boy. It may seem a tragic thing, I know it does, but you’re younger than you know…” Her brow creased with thought as she surveyed him. “You’ll find yourself someone. And though it don’t seem so now…it might be better this way than you think.”

Zekiel blinked. “Tragic…?” He shook his head, smiling — though there was an undeniable heaviness at the back of his throat that he could not identify. He chose to ignore it. “I do not think it tragic. All has unfolded only as the gods intend…and I trust and pray that he is well wherever that may be. It is not my place to judge the paths the gods set beyond that, whether they be ours or his that guide his footsteps now.”

If Marleya’s expression was skeptical, amused, or ‘knowing’ — as though she alone were privy into details of his psyche that even he had not unwound yet — he couldn’t have said. But she clicked her tongue just the same, shaking her head.

“Gods, gods, gods…” Her eyes stole a stray glance his way. “Don’t you take me for anythin’ but a god-fearing woman now, but you get to see this many sunrises and you’ll see for yourself what the ‘gods intend’ often’s got a good bit to do with who’s doin’ the tellin’, boy, and what please them. Gods above be as they be, don’t forget the small ‘gods’ under our noses, happy to tell the others of us how a life ought be.”

Zekiel watched her, a small crease forming on his brow. “I don’t understand.”

She met his gaze. “He was a good boy and an odd one. Just as you are. But the stars aren’t often kind to odd boys, you’re luckier ‘n most every one of ‘em all together, and you’re not a little fisher’s child as you once were. You can put on cottons and walk about in the wet and make an old lady’s food, but it won’t turn you back to one of us that the universe isn’t watchin’. Do you think they’d have let you keep him about always? An outsider with one of their most precious own, looking at you as he did…whether you like to think it or not, this world more than just our gods has plans for you, and I would venture a recon that they don’t have a lot to do with boys across the far shore.”

Zekiel dried his hands.

“You find yourself a pretty girl,” Marleya continued before he answered. “You find yourself a pretty girl here and you learn how to kiss her like she likes. You do that…” She gestured at him with a pointing finger, “and you’ll be happy you did, you’ll see.”

Zekiel smiled, and gave a small dip of a nod. “I will endeavor to.”

Though he still was not certain how to take all of her words, he let them settle with him for the moment and remain undisturbed, ready for further contemplation at a later point if necessary. He missed Ottolo, though he oughtn’t have, and missing him was a strange feeling in itself, as though a small part of his chest had hollowed itself out as space for the boy and now — he studied the rain lines trickling down the pane of Marleya’s window — now, that space would be present, permanently carved and patiently vacant for always.

Do you think they’d have let you keep him about always?

“But since not ‘im, what brought you back about this way?”

Zekiel looked back to Marleya just as she raised her smoke to her lips, heavily folded eyelids shutting with a long drag as she did. In the cumulative, the haze from it was now akin to a thin and stagnant low-lying fog in the room. Though this was his second day with her, she had not asked yet and he had not given any specific reason why now he had come again.

“Jevan,” he said. “I had thought that perhaps you might know if he is well, whether he still lives about here or if the gods have taken him already…and where I might find him if they have not.”

Result: Zekiel pays a visit to the village of his birth and one of his caretakers there, the aging sailmaker Marleya. The two of them exchange conversation on life,
and Zekiel reflects on a lost friend, and a man he still sees as a shadow of the figure a father should be.
Cast: Zekiel, Marleya, Jevan, Ottolo ||Word Count: 2,473

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ The Man and The Sea ▼

The sea winds billowed inward, salty, and irregular, but persistently frigid with winter’s n**. After speaking with Marleya, and talking her through her reluctance with him seeking out Jevan’s company to begin with, Zekiel had learned that the man who’d sired him still lived in the ‘same’ hut—but in a different location. A coastal storm had surged inland some four and a half years back, tearing down a great bulk of the structure he’d had, the structure Zekiel had spent his first years in. After it and in face of the wreckage, and without better means to attain new material, Jevan had dedicated a period of time to hauling everything salvageable off with whatever means and beasts of burden he could borrow, to begin anew further from the storm’s focus: further south.

In the last days of his leave, Zekiel made his way down the coast by Marleya’s instructions, and found the reconstructed hut that must, by his best guess, have been Jevan’s. He’d built it up half upon stilts, and more in from the shore than his last, but still with the sea in sight. Along the beachline, Zekiel had found a pier, and that was where he stood now, just past midnight with a high moon overhead.

The skies, at least, had cleared since the day prior, though the air had an energy to it that hinted of the potential for quick and irregular moods. Zekiel waited midway out onto the pier, the boards beneath him stable, though occasionally creaking under the push-pull of the surf. At the end of it, a mooring pillar waited with rope coiled, ready for a fishing skiff to be pulled up beside it.

Jevan had built one near identical to it just outside the hut he’d had in Yjorth.

If he let himself imagine it, he could see the sky brighter in his memory, red-orange with evening, and himself at four summers perched at its edge, legs dangling loose and swinging, waiting for the evening to bring Jevan home. This felt different, so he shut his eyes instead, tucking his fingers at his sides against the wind and breathing in.

Then, he felt the first raindrop on his cheek.

It was the season, the last legs of a wet autumn moving into an icy winter, and the storms had yet to loosen their grip on the island’s shorelines. Still, it was far too dark for anyone, particularly of Jevan’s age, to be out alone as he was certain to be. Zekiel began to pray.

The rain tickled his nose, cold but gentle at first, then fiercer and in greater quantity. Though he had brought nothing with him with which to anchor it — beads, or any stand in for a shrine — he took fingers to his chest in any case, motioning a symbol of the goddess, Dafiel, for protection. When he opened his eyes, it was to an irregular slosh, and a rapidly approaching shadow coming inward from the horizon over the sea. It grew larger as it drew in, and Zekiel took one step back.

As anticipated, Jevan was alone.

He looked, as he came into view — grey eyes glowing faint, but still the most vivid pinpoints of him in the darkness — like some kind of haggard sea ghoul, his purple hair in a rough and long beard that took over most of his face, and hair only barely tamed enough to be presentable in public. Even as a drunk. It was graying, Zekiel saw as he pulled in close, heavily in portions in a way that stuck out against the darkness of the rest of it. Zekiel had inherited his fairer traits from his mother.

Then, the boat lurched forward on a wave, suddenly within audible range. “Who. The. F—ck. Are you, then—?”

Zekiel had not been sure what to anticipate the man’s first words in his presence again after fourteen years might be, but he didn’t have long to dwell on the reality of it in that moment either. Before there was opportunity to, Jevan’s skiff lurched inward a second time, this time catching a wave at a dangerous angle — the winds, with the rain, had picked up — and the nose of the boat dipped and bobbed with dangerous irregularity as it closed in on the dock. Zekiel dropped to a knee at the pier’s edge and, despite some unintelligible outburst (presumably of objection) from Jevan, he snatched up the skiff’s bow docking rope.

“What inspired a god, to consume a thing, that gave ‘em such constipation as to s**t you out, now of all hell’s hours, on my pier-”

For a hundredth of a second, after his fingers had closed around the twine and just before he touched it to the pillar to begin knotting, Zekiel wondered if he might have forgotten how. But it had not been fourteen years since he had knotted rope, and in the extra time he had spent in Marleya’s company during Ottolo’s visits, most of the basic practices in life this close the shore were re-introduced in portions. Zekiel lashed the rope to the mooring pillar. Jevan stood, moving as though to begin securing the stern as well despite his verbal preoccupations.

A wave knocked to the side of the boat, slapping the hull with enough bulk and force in conjunction that Jevan staggered in place. He was a seaworthy man, or certainly had been once at his prime, at least in terms of the niche of his chosen craft. But that was absent exterior circumstances. Zekiel had no way to know in that instant what the man was working with in terms of food, sleep, substances in his body, or otherwise, and ‘fully upright’ was the most precarious position to manage as one’s footing tipped or jarred irregularly. When he tipped, Zekiel saw the splash in his mind’s eye before he heard it.

It was a messy fall, complete with swaying attempts at regaining balance and sweeping hand gestures, the skiff creaking and battering to one of the pier’s pillars in the moments before the man’s garbled cursing was swallowed by the shallow surf. Zekiel hopped onto the boat. He kept low, pulse beating quick in his throat as he maneuvered around and over the spaces taken up by Jevan’s daily ‘catch’ and various tools. Upon making it to the skiff’s stern, he took up the aft docking ties, and managed — after gripping to the dock and using his position in the boat pull it back where it ought and not allowing the swells to continue pushing it overtop the water where Jevan was now sputtering in his attempts to hoist himself back topside — to secure it.

With the boat fastened and no longer in danger of beating its owner under the surf, Ze moved to help Jevan himself: soaked, sour, and with a grip like iron when it latched onto his arm. Between the two of them, he was hoisted back aboard, making a pool in his wake like dark runoff. Once on board, he snarled from behind his teeth and the next instant, his grip was at Ze’s throat, blisteringly frigid and wet knuckles fisting tight at the collar of his shirt and jerking him in to demand: “Who are you?”

The words were as rough on the ears as the man was on the eyes. His breath spilled from his lips foggy-white and ragged, silver grey eyes narrowed and wrinkled with dozens of years of suspicion and discontent funneled into every crevice. But it was still that moment which was the first Zekiel had been face-to-face with him, had seen him in as much detail through eyes other than those of his childhood. For all the years that had passed between then and that moment, Jevan still managed to look — and sound — like a memory.

Don’t move.

Don’t speak.

Don’t breathe.

Though Jevan was silent in the moments after his question, Zekiel heard him in his head as he had been then. I feed you, do you think I want to have to listen to you to?

Take up as little space as possible.

He found his throat non-functional.

Jevan sneered and shoved him off, unimpressed, and staggered to the dock-side of the skiff. After jerking off a rain tarp shielding some of his goods from the elements, he hoisted a still-mostly-soaked burlap sack up, onto the dock, moved to follow himself—and then paused, eyes narrowing on one of the mooring pillars as Zekiel rubbed his throat. If he had anything to say about it, however, as his gaze moved from the knot to the boy and back, he kept those remarks to himself, and mounted the pier, nothing but stray words catching Ze on his way up, “wet as piss,” “city boy,” and something about a god’s a*****e.

“Get out of my boat…” Jevan muttered once he’d pulled himself onto the dock and toted his sack up, over his shoulder. The rain pattered audibly against his clothes and boots, trickling down off the resistant sections. Ze’s eyes followed the trail of one of them as it zig-zagged, over a button, down a— “Before I drown you.”

Zekiel got out of the boat.

Result: Zekiel seeks out - and finds - Jevan.
Cast: Zekiel, Jevan, Marleya ||Word Count: 1,571