Burning herbs. With Serib in one arm, Shay climbed a ladder not-there as she spoke a word unknown, which seemed from Serib’s point of view to unlock the light above them. A door she could not see until it opened and the ladder remained invisible. The girl shut her eyes against the sudden light emerging from the dark. She could smell a garden. Dry barks sat jarred and sealed on shelves she saw in Shay's shop, muddy roots grew from jugs of stale-slime water, fresh petals lay soft in baskets. Damp terrariums. Serib almost drooled seeing heaped spices for sale, looking at first to her as a painting of colourful mountains in the corner of the room. Shay’s candle-bright shop was a maze-like array of rolling-ladders the girl was instructed not to touch for now. No container was full or empty.
∞
Crimson and violet curtains were drawn asleep across wide-grinning windows. Serib gathered from various visible papers the shop was named ‘Yore Remedials’. Shay had vanished, so the girl of course set about giving everything a touch at best and look at least, the cloak still around her shoulders. Chewing and sniffing she could find nothing tasty. Behind the curtains Serib peeped to meet the stars noting the windows were barred. Having spent the last of her curiosity and energy, she sat with her legs swaying over an oaken wheeled-chair too tall for her, watching dance the shadows that candles seek.
∞
Shay meanwhile set aside her swords and removed her mask. A large plume of her hair she took off completely, fiddled with her eyes until their colour changed, even her nose and chin popped away from her head, revealing underneath a very different face. Her remaining hair was dry and damaged from consistent dyes, reminding Serib of straw. Shay placed her props aside and began rummaging for some soup when she turned to find Serib mid-gasp, shocked by the change in appearance. Shay fumbled an attempt at reassurance:
“It’s better this way if I get caught - all these dyes, waxes and else take a while to show.”
∞
Ochre in colour, a boiling soup soon was served, within which bobbed tender chunks or crunchy slices of root vegetables and grains soaking thick. Shay’s bowl lasted far longer than Serib’s.
“Do you have any far-bark?” the half-bald girl asked, fiddling with her four thick locks of hair, being handed a second helping.
Not long after Shay was up one of her ladders, knowing in the crooked tangle of straight shelves just where it was.
“You are from Ehl’yiteth, then?”
“That’s what you name my world?”
You see, those souls from Ehl’yiteth, as it is known to us, never share their name for their home. None will ever know why. Far-bark however has many names and uses tower-lost; one, though for a taste not easily acquired, is for crumbling over hot soup. Serib’s second bowl fumed now with smoked aroma, accompanied by ‘burnt’ and caramel whiffs. The quiet shop was filled with scents of other homes and the slurping sounds we all share.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Why are the windows barred?” Serib’s eyes struggled to stay awake against the weight of her full belly.
This seemed very sudden to Shay, though she supposed the girl’s journey had been a long one.
∞
It was not long after that until Serib fell into an uninterruptable sleep on a comfy sofa. Shay brought for her head a softer cushion and blanket wrapping her rest. While she was doing so, Shay noticed Serib’s eyes twitched and opened, closed again, and so on in a rhythm. The nature of Serib’s eyes: rolling and bloodshot, overly dilated and then not at all, prompted Shay to mutter:
“Have you taken something?”
The girl would not be stirred from sleep. Shay had before met a shaman from Ehl’yiteth, seeking certain reagents from her shop for a salve. She tried to remember what the salve was for. She panicked for a moment as the rims of her ajar curtains shone with passing light from outside and coarse voices, moving swiftly on.
∞
While tidying and sorting, Shay looked over Serib slumbering in fathoms deep. Thinking to the notes in her thoughts:
‘Why were those guards and lights searching for you? Helpless, stumbling little whittle-thing…’
Grinding some petals and seeds from the same flower into a paste she mulled equally over the clock towers missing their long and short-armed namesakes. Wondering where numbers had gone. What numbers were. The grandclock in her shop, taller than her and most customers, was out of nowhere in a state of disrepair. She knew it was working well before she left to steal the seeds, then she wondered why she knew this; what was this grandclock and what are clocktowers for, anyway? What was so important to her about their faces? Staring blankly at the faceless front of her grandclock or reaching into the dust behind it, none of it helped - she had completely forgotten what she wanted to see.
∞
‘Guar’dezhan, The Chiming One’ she read inscribed as a makers mark of sorts around the back of the grandclock, but that was not what she had been looking for either. She stared and stared at the clock face answerless into frustration.
∞
Sipping aromatic tea from a chunky armchair, with but one candle straining against the dark, Shay still brooding watched Serib sleep. It all reminded her of a family she would rather not recall, of things she had set her circumstances against and to avoid. A loneliness preferred. All through the soup and so on she had felt fine, but now she little saw Serib there curled and safe - instead she could see the loving souls of a Past that once lived here with her, and often collapsed onto that same sofa, curling together from cold in a more Needy age. Shay’s drenched heart beat with spiraling memories. The discomfort chewed from her heart into her limbs and neck, and shortly she emptied the pasty contents of a syringe into her arm. Afterwards, without really knowing why. And not wishing to know why. And not needing to.
∞
Relapsing into uncleanliness. Serib still soft asleep deeply as Shay soon would be, and the shop was ready to open whenever-later-was. Euphoria took her away from questionable answers, and there was all there was. Sipping tea into oblivion.