“‘Why is it that the sun doesn't hate you?’, she said ‘the sun doesn’t hate you’. . . . Why does that bother me so much?” A man in the corner of the tavern muttered quietly to himself. His knuckles were white as he occasionally tried to down evermore of the mind numbing substance from an empty red stone mug.
“Who cares? She was called to die, she died.”
His cloak was repeatedly patched over with fabrics of varying types and colors, only one patch over his right shoulder had a degree of vibrancy. In the middle of his table--fashioned from a flat cut of a large tree--was a blackened cap helmet. The Helmet had two bronze masks perfectly morphed in joining on opposite sides of the helm. The longer one looked at the helmet the more the pressure to look away mounted, but if one was as expressly strong willed--or perhaps stubborn--as was a son of one of the servers, they would see faintly luminous orange lines running over the mask faces to the rim of the helm proper--coalescing in runic lettering. If one were entirely too stubborn, they might notice the masks were constantly changing expressions but the expressions were always opposite the other.
“If you can’t give me a reason to worry, you’re being paranoid,” He finished.
The tavern was crowded, so much so, many were standing or leaning against the wall. The three tables around him by the window were empty.
“Something was wrong, it still is--what she said mattered.”
His voice was soft and hardly carried, flipping from impassioned to the sort of continuous monotone that was as likely to lull you to sleep as bore you there.
“You’ve said that before.”
A seemingly young woman with slightly pointed ears, dusky skin, a large pink and milky white splotched hoop earing i her right ear, and maroon dress embroidered with the sign of the higher class tavern--a bleeding tree--grabbed the boy by the ear twisted him around whispered fiercely then pointed off toward the kitchen.
“I have.”
In the middle of the room the dancing partners bowed to each other as the lively music ended, smiling and calling for more of the intoxicating beverages.
“The young one could have looked longer, he has talent.”
In the balcony above the bar the short elderly man with a bulbous nose and oversized ears put down the lute for a moment to wet his palet. The fiddler in brilliant green shrugged his shoulders and stood stretching his tall spindly figure, catching the eye of someone on the dance floor he winked with a crooked smile. Behind them the small figure swallowed in a bundle of furs minutely repositioned the stone and leather drums then leaned forward to the others whispering something.
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“I rather like this place.”
Behind the counter a maleworker wearing a loose white cotton shirt, complementing his rudy golden skin and vneck running to the start of his abs, flipped and spun three small silver containers before emptying them into two deep wine glasses; to the amusement of a snow white young lady with exceedingly long pointed ears in rich aparell . . . it was less amusing to her male counterpart.
“We have a duty.”
The sun was finally dipping over the horizon bathing the tavern in cheary yellows, oranges, and reds.
“To work for the betterment of the living races, to provide a world for them that is worth living in--ruining the joy here is not fulfilling that.”
The door opened to the street bringing the sound of all the outside fluttering in.
“Taking a boy from his mother hardly steals the joy from all of life. You, are being selfish.”
A few of those closest to the corner table glanced over. The band started again. A group slipped in the tavern through the open door.
“I, am being ALIVE!”
The band stopped with the squeal of a frightened fiddler, the dancers halted, behind the counter the barista struggled to recover his acrobatics, the attractive server with dusky skin and hoop earing froze, and the door slammed shut with a gust of wind moments into the silence. The man with a patchwork cloak and two-faced helm glanced up and the whole of the tavern saw him looking and darted away before meeting his gaze..
“You, are not in control, we will talk to the mother and go.”
The man’s face was divided down the center with the right side rotted then left as petrified flesh while the left was youthful and and twisted in rage.
“No, no we will not.”
The right eye began to gleam with aetherial vibrance in a kaleidoscope of colors. He stood up and began to talk in a calm, carrying, monotone voice, “I am sorry for the disturbance, my companion has not relinquished our previous duty; such things tend to lead to outbursts of emotion in him.” He reached over with his right hand and placed the masks under his arm. “We will be leaving now.”
The whole of the place watched or looked away with varying degrees of confidence as the thing that might have once been a man, hobbled with a noticeably stiff left side toward the exit. He stopped by the server who still seemed frozen in place, muttered something in her ear and put his hand on her shoulder.
The boy watched from the kitchen entrance as his mother walked out the door with a hiccup in her gate and silent tears covering her face, not yet knowing they were for him.