Life's A Long Song

[Kella Greeran]

... but the tune ends too soon for us all.

TS: 1st of Aperitus, Morning, Spring, Era XV

Ever feel like life is a wheel, Atalias?
The clopping of heavy hooves slowed across the dark peat and stone.
Where the Aeternia did that come from?
Kella smiled and absently scratched her hands through the black stallion's mane.
It's an ancient concept.
So why mention it now?
The woman's face lifted to the bleak white and gray shapes of the slumbering city, and she felt nervous in the paltry light of dawn.
Coming back to Frigid River after so long makes me think of being eight, twelve, fifteen… whatever age I was in those times I was moored here. And all the work I've done slowly begins to unravel. Like I never changed. Like nothing really changes. All my life is resurrected memory, a little dirtier for the burying.

Aslan's-sake, Kella, have you already been drinking?

Deflated, the Vagaran huffed and slouched her shoulders.
No, but I should've been.
Well how about some food?
Only if it's liquid.
You're a difficult cuss, Kella.
On occasion.

Kella wielded her crooked grin, rarely pretty but always compelling.
But you love me anyway, Atty. Doncha? I'm no Trevalin…
The mount's last Shadowrider, a knight of the highest and noblest cut.
Got that right.
… but I'm alright.

She was better than alright in Atalias's opinion. Chipped but never broken, fearless in broad beautiful swaths, disarming as Vagaran seas, observant of lives and lessons, greedy yet painfully selfless.

Eh. You feed me regularly.
Sounds like true love to me.

The charming tete a tete was severed by Kella's excited kick into her mount's sides.
Feth! Geroff if you're gonna be pushy!
Atalias bucked a little, but Kella was slipping off already.

From the direction of a heavy shouldered building with wooden haunches spread wide and low across the horizon, climbed a slow figure. Kella closed the distance, embracing a bald old man with watery blue eyes.

"Grampy!" their hands clapped one another's shoulders, and Kella worriedly noted there was more bone than meat to him.
"My girl," his voice was still full at least, "Good to see you."

Kella stepped back and dug a hand into her low-slung pouch.
"I brought some host's gifts for ya. A couple eras abroad has made me the classy sort."
A flat tin of cheroots was pressed into his knobbed hands, making the old man grin, rich and fine.
"Ah there's my girl. Always knew you were smarter than Kellor." A cheroot was clumsily plucked from the box: arthritic fingers. Kella couldn't watch them fumble, but dare not usurp his pride and get one for him. Time had passed. There was no wheel. It had come and sapped life with every swoop like a vast bird of prey. She turned her face away until he spoke again, as he smelled the cheroot.

"Good stuff, my girl. Very good."
"The best, Grampy. All the way from Arakmat."
His head turned quickly, crinkling the turkey-like skin on his neck.
"Arakmat? That's expensive. Lemme give you a few crowns for your trouble. I know you don't like funding my little sins."
Kella shook her head and pushed his hand away from where it hovered over his pocket.
"I don't need money, Grampy. Let me bring you presents."
"Whatcha doing nowadays where you have the luxury to turn down crowns, girl?"

Kella smiled and gave a low chuckle.
"Same damn thing. Save now it pays better and the uniform is nicer."
"Still a quaint diversion for whoever can pay?" he asked as he lit the black cheroot. Her grandfather took a draw and offered the box to Kella. She shook her head and made a passing gesture with her fingertips.
"Don't think I can do much else. But my boss is a friend. Girl could use a different twist of perspective on occasion. As could the rest of the world."
She rolled her shoulders back before she continued, working through old injuries.
"Tried the military. It was good for me. Let me know how real people get to live. But I left for my current work."
"Well of course you left," he laughed shaking the cheroot pinched between his teeth, "Thanks to your family, you're never gonna be 'real people'."

Steel blue eyes lifted to the chuckling man's face, a shade of protest turning her paler.

Then she remembered what she always knew. Her eyes fell as the toe of her boot was tapped into the ground.
"Nice to try on occasion."

A mocking smile stretched around his bobbing cheroot. "Let me know if you can ever hold still for more than two months. Or keep a fellow you like. Until then, let us Greerans not pretend too much."
The opened cheroot box was offered again, it looked tempting as sin.
"It's fine to love what you are instead of what you want to be, my girl."

A cheroot was taken, lit, and Kella breathed in the heat. Her eyes were closed, savoring the burnt out end of bad habits and days when a cheroot was supper.
"What I am, Grampy…"
She didn't open her eyes, but tilted her head back and exhaled hair thin wisps of smoke into the white sky.
"…Is always changing."
The cheroot was regarded with a wan smile, "Cheroots remind me of him and the songs. Why I lost my taste for it. For all of it."
"So you won't be doing anything on the side, my girl?" He asked.
"Haven't for eras. It's a foul trade, Grampy." She shrugged lightly, "But I still don the motley and cheer things up a bit."
"Good thing you never sampled what you sold." A stained hand patted her arm. Kella was looking at the distant house, its bones were sagging into the horizon.
"Yeah, good thing."
"It will hollow you out, my girl. Hollow you out."
Kella bit her lip as she looked at her grandfather, his body too young to look the way it did. She would not mourn the living. She would not mourn the living. There was still time.

"Hey," a softer recollection as he tried to focus on her, "You still play the flute?"
"Not for ordinations, Grampy."
A sigh, all nostalgia and smoke, "Ah, pity."


Old Greeran walked into the dark house, leaking smoke that blew back at Kella. Her hair and clothes would smell like ash, like him. She remembered him smelling sweeter: tobacco, leather and those caramel candies, when her father could still forgive his vices. Maintaining a numbing haze for all those years had yellowed him like paper in the sun.

A voice edged into her thoughts.
What was that all about? And since when did you like cheroots?
Kella turned her head to Atalias as he trotted nearer.
That was about the past and I don't like cheroots. He does. He's been alone in everything for so long, I couldn't say no.
Well put it out, you smell fething foul.
Diana's tits, Atty, it's not like you gotta kiss me.

Kella took another drag just to annoy the Shadow creature, it was tough to get him really riled up. She couldn't help but savor the moment,

Atalias snorted and shook his mane.
Last I saw, nobody was. Not blue eyes, not brown eyes. Atalias waited to deliver the killing blow. And certainly not steel eyes.

The horse wheeled and galloped off, missing Kella's fist by an inch.

[Kella Greeran]

The house seemed possessed by an organic gloom. It grew larger and more fecund with every year. Clear paths were made through clutter and nameless stains, marking where Mr. Greeran had to traverse. With little ceremony, he plopped into a chair draped with animal hides, their fur being worn down to skin by years of friction. He also continued to smoke, so Kella did not feel obligated to snuff her own cheroot as she kicked and picked her way through the front room.

As the old man settled in, Kella began to glance through cupboards and shelves. Everything was black in its crevices and the dishware was mostly chipped and poorly cleaned. Old heralds, etchings, loose nails and what might have been Elks' teeth shook in one drawer she rustled through.

"You got ink and parchment, Grampy? Got a letter or two to write."
"Who you writin'? Got a new fella?" his laugh rumbled low and almost liquid. What aspect of the question he found so funny, Kella didn't want to contemplate.
"Speaking of fellas. What ever happened to that drunk gyspy git?"
A frustrated sigh as she jammed her hand through her hair, her eyes were focused forward, stubbornly refusing to look away from the dinghy shelves.
"That was a long time ago. Don't you read any Selhaim letters I send?"
The old man coughed into a clenched hand, "You know my eyes are bad." He progressed dogmatically, "I'm glad to hear he's old news, though. You and those swarthy boys. No wonder you can't find a nice Vagaran after slumming around with the dusky gypos. You'd ruin that pretty complexion of yours, lose it in that blood."
He stretched in his seat, "Imagine having children that wouldn't even look like you. All dark and common."
Kella bowed her head, feeling old millstones looped around her neck. Gods, she was glad for the cheroot in her mouth, it was enough to smother her tongue.
"Family means more than common looks. But, Aslan, old man, let's skirt around the issue. I'm not here long enough for a spat about races. Considering my choices, just be glad I'm not dragging home dracons."
"Whatever you say, Kell-bells." The childish nickname meant he had already dismissed her opinion to the protest of an adamant seven-year-old. "But what did happen to him?"
Kella gripped a shelf and sank her head between her locked arms.
"He died, Grampy. I'm here for the funeral feast."
"Eh?" he twisted in his chair, then shrugged, nonplussed by the news, "Always knew he'd come to a bad end."
"We all come to bad ends," she mumbled, "Just some faster than others."
"What was that Kella?" a croak of a question.
"Nothing, Grampy…" Her hands began pushing around the half filled jars and pulling down little spider pavilions.
"I'm appalled at your kitchen, though. You'd think you rented to Orcs or a host of Brownie bachelors."
The man laughed at her complaints, "Good thing my doting granddaughter is here to make things orderly again, hm?"

Even as she was rolling up her sleeves, Kella countered, "Don't push your luck, old man." But it came out in more of a grumble as she bit her cheroot in her teeth.

"You're the only luck, I've got, Kella." His watery eyes were on her now, weak with the years, emptied by honesty.
Truth always came from him in fragments, sharp fractions of glass that twisted into exposed flesh. Kella blinked over the pain for his pain. Couldn't say he didn't deserve his suffering, but then they all deserved worse than what they got. Mercy was letting another crab crawl free from the bucket. Grace was helping him go. And today, Kella felt graceful.
She said nothing, meeting his eyes was enough. She nodded to herself and began to tie back her hair and shuck unnecessary layers of clothes.

Atalias eventually found her outside pumping water into a mildewed bucket, and up to her brilliantly painted elbows in lye soap. She was sweating a little and her neat garb and belts were reduced to brown leather pants and a loose white shirt usually worn by men. So much for assistant to the consul, she looked like a squire doomed to stable duty.

Kella looked up briefly from her scrubbing, the bucket pinched between her knees.
"Some vacation, huh? And tomorrow we watch my ex-beau get all burned up," she gritted her teeth over an especially caked fragment of mildew, "Like a real barbarian."
Her arm grew limp in the water, her body slouched like a puppet. But Kella breathed in another breath, and knew life was beautiful and wild.
"Hey, Atty, watch this. Let's see if I still got it."
A few discolored cups were plucked from the bucket, and Kella stood. With a toss, one was up in the air, and another, and another. Her eyes watched the highest arc of the circle as the ceramic passed between her hands.

[Wildcard]

"Got it? Girl, talking to mares and mammals seems the worst of your troubles if ye can juggle hearts as easily as cups." A leather clad gypsy entered the scene as softly as a plucked cord. His eyes were crystal blue and his brazen hair short and blonde. Arrogant to the point of refinement, the inner caliber of the man's tools were pliable enough to smile. The left glove began to be pulled from the fingers revealing his shaded escape. In the oath of cold orbs she didn't know this glance, but as a glade of warmth sliced the lips it was easy enough to remember a boy come man now striding before.

"What you don't remember young Connor? I've a face that recalls your white knuckles among other marrow." The rogue man touched his right cheekbone with a forefinger in good spirit. Amidst the stitching of a deep tunic lined the body in cotton, satin and care; twin belts and a collection of sharp commodities lower then the tongue. With a mandolin and sword across the shoulders, the rover's features seemed a tad severe for a wit so light. There was virtue behind those eyes, but they lifted like a cat covered in barely boots and a fiddle.

"Well now that I remember .. it was only you who designed me Conchobar! Never holding to the subject. .. " The man drew close enough to keep his distance, yet pushed into the linger of space between. Their eyes met.

"Been a While. .. " He blinked refracting. "I wrote a song they sing even unto the halls of Haventon.. Wrote it in your scent'd wake." His words were deep in their bold precision. Accurate while teasing the perse he never kept nor conquered.

"Ahem.

A voyage with wayter and a star, in drowning air and squalls of prec'ous bran; A war of lights in the heated flashes, two bodies blasted in a single burst of honey

Funny. They say it tastes funny.."

There was a light smirk as Connor the King of Earth and Verse bowed to his braying welcome.

"I've music, shall we dance to pass up? Faster we go make for spinning losses and time..
Nare lost beauty. No the fae draw like dew the 'pression of light to your skin. Soft Fire, the strokes of youth and precious Dawn. You've not changed but your eyes welcome only strangers."

Gently, almost seriously the man reposed while leaning. "Heard you returned.. we mourn brave Mortality. Sleeping under the rudder of Fate every song should meet it's ends so flatly and with conscience. The gods weight us by our losses... Our choices by their worth. "

Connor's gravity grew noble.

[Kella Greeran]

One by one the ceramic was caught and swallowed by the water in the bucket at her feet. She would not allow herself to startle at strangers, she'd seen enough to know when fear was worth allowing and when it was merely show.

"I don’t juggle hearts so well," an answer made arid by honesty, "And the horse is a fine conversationalist."
Eyes frosted like sea-glass squinted at the visitor from beneath a hand lifted to shade her glance. There was no flicker of especial warmth, only crisp interest.

Then he smiled, and it echoed on her mouth but warmer and wider.
"Conchobar! Feth me blind!"
She rubbed her wet palms on her thighs.
"I can't recall whether I called you that as an homage to kings of Vagaran myth or because you liked hounds."

Then he began to turn a spinning wheel and fashion his own replies.

"Ahem.
A voyage with wayter and a star, in drowning air and squalls of prec'ous bran; A war of lights in the heated flashes, two bodies blasted in a single burst of honey,
Funny. They say it tastes funny."

Kella laughed, free as a rush of sparrows. She was always open with her shows of humor, moved quickly to delight like a child.
"Tastes funny? That's one I've yet to hear, Conchobar."

His rhapsody spiraled and deepened like a maiden's blush, and Kella listened with a quiet fondness. It was flattering to pretend he spoke of her, but she knew poets wrote lines to creatures of their own imaginings.
Her lips bided secret smiles and her thoughts were stringing memories as glass beads. The ordinations had been heavy but bright when they last kept company.

"Weigh us by our losses?" Her tongue clucked once, "For all I know, the gods weigh our hearts against a feather. Those are thoughts too lofty for a fool like me." She undid her flax colored hair, it barely rested on her shoulders, and her sea colored eyes were made gentle by old mourning.
"I am not surprised the gods took Yoska young. He was too unfettered to survive in a place so solid," she tugged a lock, recalling where Yoska had twisted it around his brown fingers and called her his 'bitti amral'.
"But then, he was too rare to die."

Kella breathed in, lifting her shoulders and her falling eyes.
"So, yes, I come to remember Yoska, and to visit the old Greeran patriarch." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder towards the drooping eaves of the decaying house and spoke wryly.
"The family estate, worthy of my noble surname."
An apologetic strain infected her tone, "I'd invite you in, but Mr. Greeran would cough up a brick. Loathes gypsies."
As the Vagaran gave her old partner in childhood crime a once-over, she smiled crookedly.
"You look more dangerous than I remember, Connor." Her lashes lowered as her eyes traced the singing shapes of steel hiding in his tunic.
"The quiet Conchobar I recall earned a space on this arm," she extended her petalled limb, "By getting me books to read and teaching me limericks."
Her fingertip was following the labyrinth of flowers inked on her skin until it settled on a demure little forget-me-not near her elbow. She tapped it gently, reminding them both of the bud she chose for her shy friend the era they parted ways.

She looked at the flower a bit too long, nostalgia was beginning to lap at her ankles. Covering the tattoo with her sleeve, she hastily put the past away.

"Tell me friend, has life been a fair mistress to you?" That devil's smile, like a vague proposition, "Or at least an amorous one?"