The curious man took the rope and untwined the ball that he held in his hands. Using the extra length, he went to the tree on his side and ran it around the thickest branch on the front facing side. Twice he managed to span the excess around, it was a little loose at first, but by straining himself to pull down on the rope as hard as he could, it quickly grew taught. Placing a hand on top of it, he pressed down with some weight, until he seemed satisfied with its resilience. It was old, but a well crafted rope.
“Okay. Now climb across,” he called over to the girl.
Esper looked at the rope rising in a slight upward angle away from her and then back at the curious man blankly. “How?”
“Grab hold of it with your arms and pull your legs up and wrap them around it, then just slide over.”
“But what if I fall?”
“You won’t.”
“I might.”
He breathed in sharply and rubbed the bridge of where his nose should be. “You spent all night on a rope yes?”
“Mm!” nodded Esper in proud affirmation.
“You climbed out there to bring the rope back here, yes?”
“Mm.”
“So you should be able to do this too?”
Esper looked down at the gap before her. “Can you come over and carry me to the other side?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? My arms hurt, my legs hurt. I don’t wanna,” she protested.
“I thought you were trying to cross this gap, now there is a way and you don’t want to?”
“Please?”
“No,” replied the tall man dryly, the concept of dangling over the gap was not even entertained by his thoughts. He would leave the child here before that. He would. Esper looked back over her shoulder down the way towards the landing, picturing the road to the Burrow in her mind. Her thoughts followed it all the way through, past the tall blue trees and the sign. Past the light-less windows and up all the way to the door of her home.
The little room filled with her things, papa’s rocks and mama’s book were still there somewhere. A gentle breeze rose from the gap, riding upwards along her spine and straddled her hair and she knew that she wasn’t allowed to go back. She nodded to the wind, the wind nodded back. The curious man watched as the strange girl ran back for a second down the way, for a moment he thought she was leaving after all. His heart jumped in fear, he would have to go after her. Nervously he looked at the rickety rope construction spanning the gap.
To his alleviation however, the girl came running back to the gap, a long mud soaked cloth in her hand. She unfolded it and threw it over the rope where it dangled freely in the wind. “What are you doing?” Asked the curious man. “It’s not a laundry line, girl.”
Esper looked back to him. “I don’t want to burn myself again, the rope has sharp pieces.” She looked at her hands and body, they were as filthy as the sheet. Her cuts stung beneath the caked layer of gunk on her palms, her right arm and legs were functioning, but she almost didn’t want them to, if it meant they would stop hurting.
But she knew that she had to go, no matter how tired she was. Because this was no place to live anymore. Grabbing onto the rope with her hands, she let out a muffled cry as she raised her aching body up once more and wrapped her legs around the rope, the fine cloth crumpling between them. Being upside down was an odd sensation, she looked at the curious man and laughed. “You look funny!”
“You’re one to talk,” he answered dryly.
Esper giggled and bobbed up and down on the rope a few times, accepting the fresh pain as a fair price for the experience.
He held the rope firmly on his end, not sure that he trusted it entirely. “Come on, it will be dark soon.”
“Okaaaay,” she cried back and began crawling forward, hanging upside down on the rope on her way across the gap. Placing one hand in front of the other, she then pulled her body behind her, which thanks to the finely woven cloth, slid smoothly along. It only took a moment before she had left her side of the gap and was dangling above the void. The tall man shivered at the sight, his neck hairs rising higher than before.
It was a smooth series of movements and they followed rhythmically one after the other. It didn’t take more than a minute and Esper was near the far end of the gap. Only after she had come almost entirely onto the ground, did the curious man come closer and tenderly hold out an arm. Letting go of the rope with her legs, her body flopped down to the dirt and the man put his hands beneath her arms catching her. Esper tensed up for a moment, uneasy “It’s alright, you can let go.” Wary, she nodded and let go of the rope. The man held her and carefully took a few very stiff steps back from the brink, his eyes looking past the girl before him towards the chasm behind her.
Only after having reached what he deemed a safe distance, which was all the way by the tree that the rope was bound to, did he loosen up and set the girl down on the ground. “Thanks!” She said looking up to him, straining her neck. “You’re really big, mister.” The curious man nodded. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“I am a journeyman,” he said dryly.
Stolen story; please report.
“Haaah? That’s not a name.”
The curious man raised his shoulders lazily to shrug with indifference. “Actually people who live in the pit have weird names. And they get weirder the deeper down you go.” His eyes were matte with ferocious dullness.
“Haaah?” Esper stopped and gasped. “You’re from up?”
The curious man nodded, cocking his head slightly. “Yes I am from… uh, ‘up’.”
The girl's eyes grew wide with excitement. “What’s it like? Are there a lot of birds? I want to go up too!” she cried out holding her hands together in excitement. He sighed and took a moment to yawn loudly, stretching his arms high into the air. “Oh! Did you hurt your back?” cried Esper with the same level of energy, as she heard the popping sound audibly come from his bones.
“No, I'm just a tired, old man,” he said with agitation. The youth were always so troublesome. He knelt down to meet her gaze. “Okay, so. I have a deal to offer you.”
Esper nodded with excitement “Mm!”
“You want to go up, right?”
“Mm!”
“Well how about I take you with me?”
“YES PLEASE!” shouted the girl, barely able to contain herself at her good fortune, forgoing any sense of suspicion entirely.
The curious man held a hand against his ear, shielding it from the loud squeal that she emitted. “Ah, maybe don’t yell.”
“Okay. Sorry,” whispered Esper, barely able to suppress a smile.
He sighed. “I will take you with me. BUT-!” he raised a finger to the air before her. “Once we get to the top, you need to speak to some friends of mine okay? They’ll want to ask you about your home and family-” he gestured behind her with his arm. “-and they’ll want to see your spell. So you’ll have to show them too.”
Esper thought for a moment. “But I promised I wouldn’t show anyone.”
“You showed me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah… I guess.”
The curious man nodded. “And, you need to behave. It’s a long walk up, almost a full month. So you need to be on your best behavior, okay? And listen to everything I say and tell you.”
Esper looked away to think for a moment, even though she had already decided. A devious scheme was already growing in her heart. A gentle breeze came up from behind her, whispering its secrets to her as her frayed dress billowed in the gust. Looking back towards the curious man, she said “I want more of the b-brett.”
“Bread?” he guessed. “Okay?” he added on indifferently. She nodded. He nodded back. The pact was sealed. The man turned and went to his pack, with his back to the girl, he fumbled around inside of the large bag. She stared at him with intense curiosity, when he turned around to face her again, his expression had changed.
“Haah?!”
“It’s another mask.”
“Oh. Why?” She looked at the thing he wore. It was pale and carried with it an intense, burning expression of a deeply heart-born, utter and total indifference. The indifferent man slung the giant bag over his shoulder with a grunt and began walking up the road. Esper still stood at the tree, waiting for his answer.
“Come.”
“Can you carry me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But my legs hurt. And I hurt my ankle. And my arm. And my hands. And-”
“I don’t care.”
“Wait!” shouted Esper to the tall man who was turning to leave.
“What?” he asked indifferently. The girl ran back to the rope and took the white cloth off of it, shaking it out once in the wind. She then placed it on the ground and folded it together into a small bundle. Looking at it, satisfied with her work, she took a step back and pitched it into the pit. The indifferent man stood and watched the cloth bundle sail through the air and then gently unravel, as it was caught by the wind, slowly floating down into the darkness below. He scratched his head, wondering what the point was.
The girl then went over back to the rope, placed a hand on it and muttered something to it that he was unable to hear. She ran back towards him “Okay!” He wasn’t sure what just happened, but he didn’t care much, his mind too shook from being so close to the pit to want to think clearly anymore. The dulling magic of the mask calming his nervous senses. He turned once more to walk the long road back up. “So can you carry me?” she asked again with excitement in her eyes.
“No.”
Esper groaned and walked after him with shaking legs quickly picking up the pace. “Pleeease?”
“No.”
“Hey!”
“What?”
“Have you ever eaten a bird?”
The indifferent man sighed. Together they walked up the road, the indifferent man frequently stopping to call back to the girl who was lagging behind. But he wanted to get out. His mind only wanted to climb and go as high as he could as fast as he could. With each bend of the road, she found some new object of obsession. A tree. A rock. The road itself. Everything caught her eye and everything needed to be examined closely.
It would be slow going at this rate, she was resistant to his words but what choice did he have? The wretch was coated head to toe in filth and she gave off an oddly sour smell, that he couldn’t, and quite frankly didn’t, care to identify. Quickly however, her pacing grew even slower and slower, as she began to lag behind further now. The frustrated, yet indifferent man looked back once more. Her curiosity for mundane things seemed to have been overpowered by her injuries. He stood there for a minute, until the wheezing, wet-eyed girl caught up to him.
“You need to walk faster.”
“I caaan’t!” she protested, sniffling and rubbing her eyes. The indifferent man scratched his head at the sight. Looking down at the pitiful visage of the girl, covered in rags, filth and injuries, he could see that her ankle was massively swelling now as well, the bone thin leg somehow twice the size of the other, yet still an insignificant thing to look at in total.
He sighed in annoyed indifference, turned around and knelt down. “Climb onto my pack.”
“Haah?” she cried out from behind the window of dew in her eyes.
“Nightfall will be here soon. I don’t want to spend the night on the road here, so we need to go faster” he said, shifting his gaze to the ledge not far to their side.
She looked at the mighty, drab green, rucksack attached with thick leather straps to the tall man’s shoulders. The bag alone was bigger than she was, it was almost absurd. He was a giant, yet it almost towered half his height and went out past his shoulders in width. “R- really?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered the tall man indifferently. Esper placed a hand onto the pack and felt the material beneath her fingers, her eyes shooting open in surprise, an old tear still running down her cheek.
“Oh. Are you poor?”
The man turned his head with weary eyes “What? Get on or I am leaving you here.”
Not needing another warning, Esper clambered onto the large bag. Several hard things poked into her side as she ascended, the sounds of wood striking wood coming from beneath her muddy feet. “I got mud on your bag.”
“I don’t care,” said the indifferent man. Having reached the highest part before the opening, Esper wiggled into the cloth and pushed away the objects hidden beneath, making an indent for herself on top of the bag. Once the rustling behind him ceased, the indifferent man placed his hands on his shoulder straps and rose to his feet with a grunt. He was used to carrying heavy things, this was manageable enough.
Esper gasped as she rose into the air. “Haaaah?!” The man shifted his mask to rub his nose, thankful that the wind then came to blow against him from the front.
“You’ll have to take a bath once we reach Achtel.”
“Haah? Is there a creek in Achtel too?”
The man's eyebrow fidgeted, as her weight shifted around again. “Don’t move while I am walking.”
“Soooory,” cried out the girl now managing to sit still for a moment's time. “AH!” She shouted, bringing the indifferent man off balance in surprise.
“What?” he asked.
Esper looked down at the indent below her high perch. “I’m a bird!”
The indifferent man sighed and continued his weary journey.