The pouring, pounding, heavy rain had turned the formerly dusty streets into what was essentially an elongated mud pit, making Will’s path towards the small library in which Charlie and his parents lived a messy affair. Cold, thick raindrops were soaking through his rough linen clothes like they weren’t even there, making him heavier with every running step he took, the thick leather apron also not exactly lending itself to swift movements. His boots were covered in mud, and so were his pants, but he barely even noticed, his panicked, frightened mind utterly fixated on getting where he needed to go.
His lungs were burning, his eyes half squinted shut against the rain, but he had taken this path so many times that he could have walked it with his eyes closed. After a good 5 minutes of struggling in this manner, knife still in hand, he found himself banging against the sturdy front door of the house, one of the very few in this town that had bothered with a second story for storage purposes, towering over all the others in its vicinity.
Finally, just as he started considering screaming for his friend like a mad man, the door opened. But to his dismay it wasn’t Charlie that opened the door, but instead it was his father, holding the door open, looking quite confused. One only had to take a single look at him to realize that his man was the father of his son. They looked nearly identical, from their crooked smiles, down to the way they were always slightly hunched over so they wouldn’t bump their head on doorframes. But there was not even a trace of that trademark smile on Mr. Athenae’s face now, as he looked Will up and down with a small, confused frown, before finally seemingly recognizing the boy behind the wet hair covering his face. Then his eyes fell onto the unfinished knife blade he was still clutching in his fist so tightly that the untempered metal might shatter in his grip like a porcelain vase, and they went wide with worry.
And almost unbelievably, it wasn’t worry for himself, but for Will! He stepped back to let him inside, still not having said anything, but as soon as Will was out of the rain, he started talking.
“You look like you have half the nine hells after you boy, what is going on with you?” he asked, genuine concern coloring his voice, especially when Will didn’t answer, just standing in the open doorway, panting from his sprint, and absolutely at a loss for what to do now that he was faced with an obstacle. His panic told him to keep going, to run past the older man, to seek out Charlie, to ask him if he had answers. But no. He couldn’t do that. Not only would it draw even more curiosity than his entrance already had, but more importantly, he didn’t want to do that! Charlie’s father had never been anything but nice to him, and it would be unfair to treat him like that. So, for the first time since the spark had exited him, he actively tried to return to reality, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
He had been worried, so gods damned worried that people would treat him differently, finding out that he had done something like this. But being confronted with the kindness of the man in front of him, who was worried for him, even after he had shown up at his doorstep in a rainstorm, holding a knife, his panic was almost entirely smothered by a deep blanket of shame. He could feel his face heating up, even under the coat of cold rainwater, ashamed of believing that the people close to him would turn on him, so immediately.
He almost wanted to run back, to hug his father, apologize for running away without a word, but he had come this far, and he would...
A hand on his shoulder quite literally shook him out of it, cutting off his train of thought.
“Hey, what’s up with you? I’ve never seen you like this before!” Charlie’s father asked, rephrasing his question, as from his perspective it hadn’t gotten through to the boy in front of him at all!
Finally, Will managed to meet the man’s eyes, wiping his hair out of his face, and putting on a brittle smile.
“I- Well-” he trailed off again, trying to put his thoughts into order. He liked to think of himself as quick witted, but this situation was a bit too much for him to handle with an easy comment.
“It’s hard to explain, if I’m honest. It’s- something happened at the smithy, and it worried me!”
Seeing the look on the other man’s face, he quickly amended “Noone got hurt, or anything like that, don’t worry! It was just... well, I’ve never seen it happen before, and, well, I thought Charlie might know something about it!”
Now a small smile managed to creep its way onto Mr. Athenae’s face. “And you didn’t think to come to the person who taught him almost everything he knows? Well, I suppose it’s a bit understandable. If it has you this rattled, I guess it’s something that you only want to a close friend to hear. Am I right?”
Will could only stare, as the aged librarian before him laid out the situation so concisely, leaving him speechless for another moment “I guess that’s about right, yeah!” was all he managed to say.
The older man put a second hand on Will’s other shoulder, forcing eye contact, as his voice dropped into more of a concerned, intent whisper. “But even if you won’t tell me what this is about, I need to know, that you won’t do anything you might regret, okay? Think through your actions. Calm down. And promise.”
Will was taken aback by the sudden caring intensity radiating from the gangly old man in front of him, having never gotten a talk quite like this from him before. Sure, he had gotten a small lecture or two before, spending as much time in this house as he did, but this felt somehow different. It felt like there was more behind this promise, and it finally pulled him down to earth fully. Slowly, uncertainly, he nodded his head in ascent. “I promise.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
And then before any further discussion could take place, it was cut off by a stout, heavyset woman entering the small foyer behind her husband. Upon spotting Will, she immediately started smiling broadly
“Ooooh Will, so nice to see you! Are you staying for lunch? Do you not have work to do? Why are you still in your apron? Come, take your shoes off, you must be freezing in that!” and just like that, in a flurry of motherly passion, without getting even a single word in edgewise, he was toweled off and dried, forced out of his shoes into a pair of comfortable slippers which were a trademark product of Mr. Brown’s tailoring business, and sat down at the table in the small eating area.
When he was finally sat down, mug of tea in hand, to combat the cold of the rain, was the first time he could say something without being shushed into submission.
“Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Athenae, but I was actually here to see Charlie. Is he in the library, by any chance?” that question caused the woman to chuckle “When is he ever not in the library? Yes, I imagine he must be absorbed in one book or another, though I can’t imagine he hasn’t read them all twice at this point!”
Will too had to hold back a snort at that sentiment, having calmed down a lot, thanks to the matronly ministrations of Charlies mom. And just as he wanted to get up from his seat, to finally do what he came here for, the unlocked door flew open once again, the darkness of the rainy day, framing Anya, who looked a little sheepish, fist still outstretched from having hammered on the open door, apparently a little bit too hard.
Unlike him, she had clearly taken some precautions against the rain, having thrown on an oiled overcoat that the water was sliding off of, she had taken her apron off, and from the way her pants looked relatively clean, it seemed she hadn’t made the effort to run here either. She had probably already predicted this was where he’d go.
“There you are! I knew it!” she exclaimed, pointing at Will with an accusatory glare, before realizing what she was doing, blushing a little, and nodding at Charlie’s parents, both of which were still in the room “Uh, sorry for barging in like this!” she hastily apologized “Will just ran out on us, and Dad told me to go find him! I figured he’d come here, since he almost spends more time here with Charlie, than at home sometimes!” as she spoke, she entered the house, shutting the door behind her, looking a bit sheepish as she realized how much water had already sprayed inside in the brief moment, she had taken to explain herself.
Charlie’s mom meanwhile didn’t seem to mind at all, bustling around Anya just as she had done for Will, helping her take her cloak off, and shoving a mug of tea into her hand as well, which Anay dutifully sipped at, while Will had a quiet chuckle as his towering sister was babied by the chubby woman that seemed about half her height.
“You’re both staying for lunch, I hope? Would be a shame to let you out of the house with empty bellies, don’t you think so?” the older lady insisted, sitting Anya down at the table with Will, looking at both of them expectantly.
“Well, Mrs. Athenae, I still need to talk to Charlie, but I’m sure our dad won't mind if we stay a little longer! There wasn’t that much to do anyway, there never is.” Anya nodded along with him. “Yeah, he’s already shutting down for a lunchbreak anyway, if it wasn’t so rainy, and I wasn’t here already, he’d have come himself too!” she added, to which Mrs. Athenae agreed with a broad smile, her arms crossed over her chest, seemingly having already been prepared to talk them down, and feed them at all costs. How Charlie wasn’t a ball of fat rolling around the streets, Will would never know.
Will turned to Anya, throwing back the last sips of his tea. “Alright come on, I assume you’ll want to talk to Charlie with me?” he asked, standing up and sighing a little in defeat. But he could trust Anya. She had come here for him. To check on him. His panic had lied to him, he knew now, and as annoying as it was to tell two people at once something so entirely confusing, even to him, it had to be done. Maybe as a team, they’d find a solution even quicker!
Anya nodded, of course, and stood up alongside Will, leaving her still steaming tea to cool down on the table. “We will call you when it’s time for food! Already tastes great though!” Charlie’s dad called from the kitchen, where he had vanished to a minute earlier. Hearing those words, the lady of the house whirled around so fast that Will could have sworn she had always been standing that way, her eyes locked on the kitchen door “Sweetiepieee, are you eating before the food is done again?” she asked, her voice sickeningly sweet as she approached the kitchen.
The two teenagers that had just been standing there, interrupted by the call of Mr. Athenae, took that as the signal to properly leave the conversation, quickly making their way up the stairs, and into the library of the house. As they opened the door the smell of old books wafted out, and walking inside, one could see why. Every wall was covered in shelves, filled to the brim with books, most of which had been accumulated over the centuries, mostly by the fabeled caravans that sometimes lost their way, and found themselves at the border of their village, though Will never quite understood how anyone could miss the enormous mountain in the middle of nowhere. Another much smaller chunk, were written by the villagers themselves, as some of them didn’t have much else to do and needed to put their thoughts somewhere. Will never had developed quite the same hunger for reading that Charlie had seemingly been born with, but whenever he entered this place, the surprising scale of the concentrated knowledge within it made him pause and appreciate it, even if for just a moment. But today, he had no time for that. Having left the aura of motherly calm that the woman downstairs exuded naturally, urgency had crept back into his movements, and as soon as he opened the door, he shouted “Charlie! Come out, we need to talk!”