((Trigger warning for (light) sexual content, physical abuse, alcoholism, trauma, violence.
This post cross-posted from here.))
January 21st, 2021.
After climbing the mountain and killing the pronghorn wyrm at the edge of the prairies south of the Wilds, Ettyn needed a strong drink, and she found one at the newly won Cardinal Inn. A bottle of rum black as night, black as her eyes, that burned like fire to even smell. She needed a good lay, too, a double shot of pleasure to chase the pain of the wyrm tearing into her flesh and a thousand wounds before it, and Nell and Fitzwilliam gave her the best she'd had in a long time.
She'd met skilled lovers in RhyDin, maybe more skilled than these two generously provided whores, but the wyrm had brought her closer to oblivion -- however fleeting -- than she'd been in years. The creature could have killed her and pulled the flesh from her bones up on that mountain, and she would have had days of merciful blackness, or longer. She found smaller moments of it in the rum, and the moments of rapture.
But it was after they were done that Nell and Fitzwilliam drove her from her own bed. They were good not just with their bodies, but in their manner in a way that the slayer could never afford. They lingered, not to rest but to talk. They held her and each other, sprawled their limbs, tickled and teased, laughed, drank, snacked, and shared secrets. Just little ones, intimacy in the quiet and the dim candlelight of her room at the Cardinal Inn. They had been paid well for their time, for today and tonight and six days and nights after, and they spent it cultivating an intimacy with their hearts and minds when the flesh was too exhausted.
It was a rare event. It was supposed to be a special week, an entire week in one person's company. It was supposed to be intimate in all of those ways; but they did not know Ettyn Gedda.
No one living did.
"That one?"
"Ghoul."
"And here, by your ear...?"
"Vargouille. A fucking swarm."
"Down your belly?"
"Chimera. Wasn't trying to drop my trousers."
"Fitz, I found a funny one! Here on your wrist?"
The game had started out so much fun. They took turns picking a scar and asking about it, and if she answered them? They kissed it, and kept going. Despite the cold discomfort she'd felt at their coziness, she was warming back up to them again -- at least to the idea of fooling around again tonight.
The heat dropped when they found the line where her aunt had driven a knife through her wrist. Her toothy grin vanished, lips drawn up over her teeth again as her blighted eyes fell to the old wound. Her oldest scar.
"Ettyn-- what's that one?"
Fitzwilliam had picked his head up from her lap to smile curiously at Nell and look at the scar, then up at the slayer. His expression fell, sensing they'd overstepped, and he tapped Nell on the arm.
She let go of her wrist.
The slayer didn't make eye contact with either of them, but she could sense how they were looking at her. Like someone broken, and now they were wary of catching their skin on the shards.
"Past two?"
"Not yet--"
"I'm going out."
* * * * *
The depths of winter meant closing time came earlier to many pubs, as the dark and busy hours started all the sooner. Ettyn thudded her way through the icy streets close to the northern river bank in -- well, she thought she was still in Old Market. Or had she passed the wall? She looked over her shoulder and saw the crumbling archway of the patchwork, brick-and-stone, timber-and-daub wall that separated the two districts. Just beyond it, back in Old Market, was a swinging sign, creaking in the cold wind, and a barman standing in an open door as he extinguished the lamps.
Ettyn started in his direction, boots catching and slipping on the icy cobblestones. She caught herself with an arm and threw out her hand and called out, "Hey! Hey, you-- I have coin--!"
The barman looked up, but he didn't stop, not for a noisy, dangerous-looking drunk at two in the morning. He pulled the door shut and locked it, and Ettyn slammed her fists into the ground three times, hard enough to break skin.
She saw her viscous black blood dripping onto the frozen cobblestones, gleaming in the glow of light spilling from a door and windows across the way.
She raised her head, squinting her dark eyes through a misty snow cloud blown up by a frigid wind that moaned and howled its way through the Old Market portcullis behind her. The mist cleared, revealing an inn she had never seen before. That part didn't bother her. It was open, and it was a place to drink that wasn't close to anyone trying to get close to her.
She pushed back to her feet and plodded her way across the street, pushing roughly through the door.
The bearded man standing behind the bar, dressed in sailor's garb that had once been black but had faded to a rusty brown from the color seeping out of it, grunted acknowledgment and rasped a quiet question at her. She couldn't quite hear it, but she didn't need to. Bartenders only asked one question that mattered.
"Ale," she answered, sparing not even a glance for the pair of patrons further down the lonely bar as she heaved her tired body onto a bar stool. She dug out a pair of coins, but his claw-like fingers splayed out in a stopping gesture.
"You're already paid up, miss," he said in a ragged whisper.
"Yeah. How's that," she said, somewhere between amusement and suspicion -- settled somewhat by the full mug of ale being set down in front of her.
He looked at her jet black eyes pointedly and bared his dull yellow teeth at her, like tarnished gold. "You're not for me... more's the pity." He wheezed out a laugh and trudged down the bar, snapping up a graying towel with a wet slop.
"He knows what you chose, little bug."
The voice came from a woman with short dark hair flecked with gray, weathered tan skin, and sharp brown eyes that caused the slayer to freeze. The mug of ale did not even reach her lips -- perfectly good ale. "The fuck are you doing here," she snarled. Her thumb ran along the top of the handle as her fingers tensed, as she wondered how hard it would be to bash her head in with it.
Her aunt chuckled and made a lazy gesture to the bartender. "He brought us."
Ettyn didn't look at the bartender again, but at the us. Just past her aunt was a woman with dark hair, like her aunt's, but long and wavy. Her skin was sickly pale, pink at the extremities, and her watery gray eyes were red-rimmed. She lifted a wooden cup of heady port that smelled like cherry tobacco, her sleeve falling back with the gesture, revealing the shiny burn scars from years of smithing that stood out starkly against her sickly pallor.
"You're dead," the slayer growled, and lobbed the mug down the bar to try to dispel the illusion. The ale splashed across her aunt, and the mug thumped against her mother's chest and made her wheeze. Neither of them wavered or dissipated, only grinning wider at the show of defiance they'd come to expect of her. Ettyn stood and pointed. "I watched you die... And you--" She whirled to jab her finger at her aunt.
"Years ago," her aunt confirmed, and untucked her shirt from her breeches, lifting up the hem and elbowing her cloak back. There was a ragged, rotting hole in her gut. She cracked the same kind of grin that the slayer had unconsciously learned over the years, one of many habits. "The bulette horn gutted me, but it was the frost-rot that killed me."
"What the fuck is this," she demanded of the bartender, who only grinned as he accepted the empty mug back from her mother's pale and shaky hands, wiping it out with the filthy rag that reeked of mold. "What sorcery -- and why."
"We've been on your mind," her aunt said, twisting in her stool to smile up at the slayer. "Top us off with some grog, there's a good man," she rasped, and as instructed, the bartender filled up her mug with vile rum -- cut with bad water to lessen the ill effects of both. "Why is that, little bug?"
"They asked about you tonight," Ettyn growled, taking a step back from her aunt as she covered her wrist reflexively. Her eyes sought out her mother, not with any hope of protection but a wary curiosity, and found her nodding along with her aunt and smiling approvingly. Smiling at the outcome of Ettyn Gedda.
"What's there to tell, bug?"
"Oh, she hated that even when I was alive," her mother cut in, chiding her aunt with a flap of her trembling hand. "She's big, call her Bu--"
"Neither of you get to use that name," Ettyn snarled. "Not when you lost it for me."
Her aunt snorted derisively. "You made your choice," she echoed. "You broke your name. You broke yourself."
Ettyn seized her by the collar, pivoting and throwing her against the bar as she roared in her face, "YOU BROKE ME! I was already broken when I slew the unicorn!"
Her mother stood next, feebly, but still had spirit enough for mocking laughter. "What did we do, but teach you what you needed. Weapons and armor, tracking, hunting--"
"--killing," her aunt reminded her, eyebrows raised, grin wide in spite of her niece near strangling her against the bar.
"Death and drink. I was a child," she growled at her mother, "when you turned me to drink, to numb your pain." She hadn't forgotten her aunt, moving her fingers around her throat and shaking her against the bar. "I was a child when you invited my father into our home, and I had to kill him...!"
"And kill him you did. Look at you," her aunt managed to rasp as she choked. "S... slayer..." The words died on her lips as bones cracked under Ettyn's grasp.
"We are so proud of you--" her mother began, but she stopped too when the slayer turned and drove the spike of her hatchet into the base of her throat. Red blood, far redder than Ettyn's would ever be again, spilled from her mouth as her lips worked wordlessly and wetly.
She jerked the hatchet free, and her mother dropped to the floor in a bloody heap, while her aunt slumped against the bar, broken neck lolling... and both continued to laugh, mockingly. Slay as she did, she could never be rid of them, and never mend. Jet black eyes lifted to the bartender, and she pointed the axe at them: "Stop them."
The bartender smiled, continuing to scrub stubborn stains from a mug with a filthy rag, only adding ever more marks.
"STOP THEM!" she roared, and heaved the axe at his smiling face.
* * * * *
A door slammed, and Ettyn was stumbling through a snow bank one block east of the Old Market Gate. It was the same gate, but the street was different now. There was no inn, nor any of her mother's blood on her hands -- only her own viscous and blighted blood that seeped from her broken skin, and still stained the cobblestones nearby.
She whirled around to take in her surroundings with a wild stare, but her paranoia was overcome by the weariness and ache that had been setting in for years now. She stumbled back, falling onto her butt to sit on the edge of the snow bank, and covered her black eyes with one hand.
It had been years since the last time she had felt the cold but stinging tears against her skin.
"Fuck."
Broken
Moderators: Death Knell, Anya de la Rose
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Death Knell
- Proven Adventurer
- Posts: 203
- Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:10 pm
- Location: The Wilds
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Death Knell
- Proven Adventurer
- Posts: 203
- Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:10 pm
- Location: The Wilds
Little Bug
((Trigger warning for substance and child abuse.))
Thirty years ago...
The blacksmith's daughter was a gangly little girl, like she was not quite caught up to the growth spurt that had given her long legs and arms so skinny that they seemed to wobble when she ran. She hadn't learned to pump her arms, so they trailed behind her and flapped to either side like a bird when she twisted and turned through the lumber yard near the palisade gates of Fort Tiamori.
"Fucking... Bug! Watch it!" Hazel eyes were wide as she twisted around to face the master carpenter she'd nearly blundered into, hazel eyes wide and fearful. The large man looked at the girl frozen with fright and followed her gaze to his hands, clutching a hammer and nails, and his stern expression fell uncertainly. "Just... be careful!" he said, but when it didn't look like he'd act, she didn't linger to respond.
She was off like a shot, darting down the muddy alley between the public house and the tannery, steering as clear as she could of the writhing bodies pressed against the back wall of the bawdy frontier bar. From there it was past two newly built log cabins, and down a short hill on the western side of the fort to its solitary smithy.
It was as humble as any building in Fort Tiamori, two decades old and beginning to show its age, weathered by the prairie storms that rolled in from the plains of the ruined and warring Eastern Dominion and broke against the jagged hills of the Far Wilds. Here the plains were hidden from view, even from the attic window, but at any time of day or night she could see the ancient trees of the Wilds that towered three times taller than the fort's timber watch-towers, a deep maze of deadly beasts and mysteries beyond counting. Here among the headwaters of the mighty Tiamori River, faerie circles, strange warps, firbolg villages, grugach bastions, troll caves, enchanted groves, and forgotten shrines all stood within a few days' journey, if even half the stories traded among the hunters, trappers, and rangers were to be believed.
If she focused hard enough, took in the gently swaying of the branches and the mossy hills, the rock outcroppings, and the darkness between the massive tree trunks, sometimes she could glimpse something. Rabbits and rodents on the forest floor, squirrels and birds in the branches, desperate deer feeding too close to danger, or sometimes a fox, or even a wolf, keeping a wary eye on the fort while it stalked its prey. And very rarely she saw a flash of something unrecognizable, a pale coat, a craggy shoulder, or something with too many eyes glowing in the dark...
She didn't hear the muddy footsteps coming from behind, but she felt the ear-ringing cuff to the back of her head. "Owww..." She stayed turned away while the hot tears fell from the shock of pain. Crying to her mother rarely made things better.
"You--" Her mother's low, raspy voice broke into ragged coughs, punctuated by a gasp. "You watch AND listen, little bug," and there was a light slap to her ear to emphasize her point. "If I'd sent you with your aunt, you'd be wolf shit by now."
Her little fingers tightened around the hide pouch in her hand, jingling the coins within. It distracted her mother.
"Another quarter?"
"They said it was all of it," she mumbled to her mother, turning now to hold it out.
"You didn't check?" The disappointment and frustration showed in her mother's growl, and she pushed at the girl's back to move her along, to the back door to the living area behind the smithy. She didn't stumble -- since the last time her mother had gotten ill, she didn't push and slap as hard as she used to. "Can't trust them, little bug."
"The militia...?" she asked uncertainly, and her mother snorted.
"Anyone."
* * * * *
"How old are you now?" her mother asked as she upended the coin-purse onto the crooked table. She stepped away to let her daughter catch the coins rolling towards the edge, count them all out, and (unwittingly) give her some time to puzzle out the answer.
When was the last time she had been told her age, where she'd trusted her mother's reckoning more than her own? How many seasons had passed since her aunt's last visit, when her mother had said, "This wee bitch is in her fifth year." She reasoned it out, timing a few major events, and said, "Eight."
"Hm-hm..." She heard the dull thunk of a heavy glass bottle hitting the small counter they used for cooking. "Did they pay in full?"
"...Yes," she nodded when she finished counting. She scooped the coins back into the pouch, less two copper pieces, and held it out to her mother...
...who traded it for a pewter cup. Her hazel eyes blinked widely with surprise, and her nose wrinkled with the smell of the hazy liquor that reeked of juniper burbling into her cup. When her mother scowled, she scowled back. Being scowled at never bothered the blacksmith, and the little girl had pegged it as a safe expression. "I was ten when I had my first hard drink. You're close enough, little bug... and right now, I can--"
A wracking cough interrupted her words, and once more the little girl watched wide-eyed as her mother as she sank into her seat by the window. In the light that filtered through, it was clearer how pale she was today, light brown skin turned a sickly shade by whatever affliction had lingered after her sickness. She gasped as she steadied herself, and poured more liquor into her own cup.
"...Right now," she resumed, hoarsely, "I can afford to share. I can buy a new bottle in the morning." She picked up her cup, her watery gray eyes meeting her daughter's nervous, uncertain and fast-moving hazel gaze. "Hey," she said in a stern tone, and the word caused her daughter to tense, and focus. "All that hard work's finally paid off. While we can... let's celebrate. Drink."
The little girl raised the mug to her lips, and hesitated. She'd had watered-down wine and ale before, small amounts, like most children who grew up here -- and even an unwatered sip at the fort's last feast, a rare occasion. But hard drink like this?
Her mother made the decision for her, a clammy hand over her own forcing the mug back. Most of it spewed right back out in a spray, and daughter and mother both coughed wheezily, one from the liquor, the other from the amused laughter she made no effort to contain.
"Pour me another, little bug... and keep working on your cup."
* * * * *
"Your aunt... I wrote her, your aunt... she's coming."
The one cup of Wildling gin had turned the girl's stomach sour and drowned her senses in an uncomfortable haze she wanted to crawl back out of, but her mother had had far more. She was sprawled out in a low chair by the stone hearth, the wood creaking as she moved her knees in and out, rocking herself back. The bottle was empty, resting by her feet.
It was something that the girl was expected to pick up, but she wasn't getting close to her mother, not right now. Maybe after she'd passed out. She swallowed a few times, not trusting her stomach right now, and finally asked, "Why?"
Her mother smiled at her, somewhere between sad and amused, and waved an arm slowly to indicate herself, as if it should be obvious. "Because I am dying, little bug."
That did it. A hiccup of tears quickly let the bile up her throat, and she dashed from her seat, nearly tripping before she reached the bowl of scraps to be tossed out. What was left of the drink and bits of her last meal ended up in the bowl, and when she slumped back from it to sit on the floor, she was weeping with a high, quiet keening. Her world was small, and miserable, and now it was all falling apart.
"Stop that... Fucking... stop that!" Her mother reached around blindly, found a shirt balled up on the floor, and flung it at her daughter. She scowled tearfully at her mother, who scowled right back. "I try... I keep trying... to teach you! You don't cry. No one cares if you cry. It's just a... dinner bell, for all the monsters out there... and there are so many... everywhere... in this fort."
Her daughter sniffled, but the scowl remained as she wiped an arm across her face. "Hate you... I hate you," she hissed.
Her mother chuckled, which turned to another wheezy cough, and nodded along to her daughter's reply. "You think I'm one of them... I might be. But I'm the only one... who gives a shit about you... anywhere. I'll make your aunt help you... she owes me... but if you want something from me, little bug... you ask now. Ask... while we have time," she wheezed, her words broken from the slurring of drink as much as her need to gasp for air.
Her daughter stayed where she was, still sniffling. The scowl faded by degrees, but her eyes remained wary -- and angry. "I want you to stop calling me that," she mumbled.
"Speak up--"
"Stop calling me that!" the girl shrieked, springing to her feet and stamping on the shirt that had been flung in her face. "Everyone calls me little bug and roach and worm! My name's Buddug! BUDDUG!"
Dizzy from the drink and the burst of fury, Buddug dropped back into her chair at her table, folding her arms over the creaky armrest and weeping hot tears. Over the ringing in her ears and the sound of her own sobs, she could still hear her mother coughing and laughing wheezily from her chair by the hearth.
Finally, she spoke. "Do you know what Buddug means? Did I... ever tell you...?"
Her daughter looked up with another scowl and shook her head. Her hazel eyes were moving again, worried, uncertain -- and assessing. The bottle by her mother's feet. The iron poker leaning by the hearth.
Her mother's smile turned sad as she watched her, and said, "It means winner. You think... you can win... against me... right now, as I am. Maybe you can... your aunt, she'll teach you that better. More than making and mending arms and armor... how to use them. But..." She leaned forward, stifling a cough, and pointed at her daughter. "...if you win against me... what next? What do you tell the monsters here? Can you win against them -- make them believe you...? Or do you run... run into the plains... or the Wilds, like your aunt... and take your chances with beasts, and marauders, and cold, and hunger, and sickness... Can you win against them? Or do you get squashed... underfoot... like a little bug?"
Buddug's only reply was a sniffle, wiping an arm across her face again.
"...That's what I thought, little bug... but, fine. I'll call you Buddug." The smile turned to a slow grin, unfocused gray eyes drifting slowly to the window, and she sighed. "...and maybe my sister breaks you sharp enough to make you win."
Thirty years ago...
The blacksmith's daughter was a gangly little girl, like she was not quite caught up to the growth spurt that had given her long legs and arms so skinny that they seemed to wobble when she ran. She hadn't learned to pump her arms, so they trailed behind her and flapped to either side like a bird when she twisted and turned through the lumber yard near the palisade gates of Fort Tiamori.
"Fucking... Bug! Watch it!" Hazel eyes were wide as she twisted around to face the master carpenter she'd nearly blundered into, hazel eyes wide and fearful. The large man looked at the girl frozen with fright and followed her gaze to his hands, clutching a hammer and nails, and his stern expression fell uncertainly. "Just... be careful!" he said, but when it didn't look like he'd act, she didn't linger to respond.
She was off like a shot, darting down the muddy alley between the public house and the tannery, steering as clear as she could of the writhing bodies pressed against the back wall of the bawdy frontier bar. From there it was past two newly built log cabins, and down a short hill on the western side of the fort to its solitary smithy.
It was as humble as any building in Fort Tiamori, two decades old and beginning to show its age, weathered by the prairie storms that rolled in from the plains of the ruined and warring Eastern Dominion and broke against the jagged hills of the Far Wilds. Here the plains were hidden from view, even from the attic window, but at any time of day or night she could see the ancient trees of the Wilds that towered three times taller than the fort's timber watch-towers, a deep maze of deadly beasts and mysteries beyond counting. Here among the headwaters of the mighty Tiamori River, faerie circles, strange warps, firbolg villages, grugach bastions, troll caves, enchanted groves, and forgotten shrines all stood within a few days' journey, if even half the stories traded among the hunters, trappers, and rangers were to be believed.
If she focused hard enough, took in the gently swaying of the branches and the mossy hills, the rock outcroppings, and the darkness between the massive tree trunks, sometimes she could glimpse something. Rabbits and rodents on the forest floor, squirrels and birds in the branches, desperate deer feeding too close to danger, or sometimes a fox, or even a wolf, keeping a wary eye on the fort while it stalked its prey. And very rarely she saw a flash of something unrecognizable, a pale coat, a craggy shoulder, or something with too many eyes glowing in the dark...
She didn't hear the muddy footsteps coming from behind, but she felt the ear-ringing cuff to the back of her head. "Owww..." She stayed turned away while the hot tears fell from the shock of pain. Crying to her mother rarely made things better.
"You--" Her mother's low, raspy voice broke into ragged coughs, punctuated by a gasp. "You watch AND listen, little bug," and there was a light slap to her ear to emphasize her point. "If I'd sent you with your aunt, you'd be wolf shit by now."
Her little fingers tightened around the hide pouch in her hand, jingling the coins within. It distracted her mother.
"Another quarter?"
"They said it was all of it," she mumbled to her mother, turning now to hold it out.
"You didn't check?" The disappointment and frustration showed in her mother's growl, and she pushed at the girl's back to move her along, to the back door to the living area behind the smithy. She didn't stumble -- since the last time her mother had gotten ill, she didn't push and slap as hard as she used to. "Can't trust them, little bug."
"The militia...?" she asked uncertainly, and her mother snorted.
"Anyone."
* * * * *
"How old are you now?" her mother asked as she upended the coin-purse onto the crooked table. She stepped away to let her daughter catch the coins rolling towards the edge, count them all out, and (unwittingly) give her some time to puzzle out the answer.
When was the last time she had been told her age, where she'd trusted her mother's reckoning more than her own? How many seasons had passed since her aunt's last visit, when her mother had said, "This wee bitch is in her fifth year." She reasoned it out, timing a few major events, and said, "Eight."
"Hm-hm..." She heard the dull thunk of a heavy glass bottle hitting the small counter they used for cooking. "Did they pay in full?"
"...Yes," she nodded when she finished counting. She scooped the coins back into the pouch, less two copper pieces, and held it out to her mother...
...who traded it for a pewter cup. Her hazel eyes blinked widely with surprise, and her nose wrinkled with the smell of the hazy liquor that reeked of juniper burbling into her cup. When her mother scowled, she scowled back. Being scowled at never bothered the blacksmith, and the little girl had pegged it as a safe expression. "I was ten when I had my first hard drink. You're close enough, little bug... and right now, I can--"
A wracking cough interrupted her words, and once more the little girl watched wide-eyed as her mother as she sank into her seat by the window. In the light that filtered through, it was clearer how pale she was today, light brown skin turned a sickly shade by whatever affliction had lingered after her sickness. She gasped as she steadied herself, and poured more liquor into her own cup.
"...Right now," she resumed, hoarsely, "I can afford to share. I can buy a new bottle in the morning." She picked up her cup, her watery gray eyes meeting her daughter's nervous, uncertain and fast-moving hazel gaze. "Hey," she said in a stern tone, and the word caused her daughter to tense, and focus. "All that hard work's finally paid off. While we can... let's celebrate. Drink."
The little girl raised the mug to her lips, and hesitated. She'd had watered-down wine and ale before, small amounts, like most children who grew up here -- and even an unwatered sip at the fort's last feast, a rare occasion. But hard drink like this?
Her mother made the decision for her, a clammy hand over her own forcing the mug back. Most of it spewed right back out in a spray, and daughter and mother both coughed wheezily, one from the liquor, the other from the amused laughter she made no effort to contain.
"Pour me another, little bug... and keep working on your cup."
* * * * *
"Your aunt... I wrote her, your aunt... she's coming."
The one cup of Wildling gin had turned the girl's stomach sour and drowned her senses in an uncomfortable haze she wanted to crawl back out of, but her mother had had far more. She was sprawled out in a low chair by the stone hearth, the wood creaking as she moved her knees in and out, rocking herself back. The bottle was empty, resting by her feet.
It was something that the girl was expected to pick up, but she wasn't getting close to her mother, not right now. Maybe after she'd passed out. She swallowed a few times, not trusting her stomach right now, and finally asked, "Why?"
Her mother smiled at her, somewhere between sad and amused, and waved an arm slowly to indicate herself, as if it should be obvious. "Because I am dying, little bug."
That did it. A hiccup of tears quickly let the bile up her throat, and she dashed from her seat, nearly tripping before she reached the bowl of scraps to be tossed out. What was left of the drink and bits of her last meal ended up in the bowl, and when she slumped back from it to sit on the floor, she was weeping with a high, quiet keening. Her world was small, and miserable, and now it was all falling apart.
"Stop that... Fucking... stop that!" Her mother reached around blindly, found a shirt balled up on the floor, and flung it at her daughter. She scowled tearfully at her mother, who scowled right back. "I try... I keep trying... to teach you! You don't cry. No one cares if you cry. It's just a... dinner bell, for all the monsters out there... and there are so many... everywhere... in this fort."
Her daughter sniffled, but the scowl remained as she wiped an arm across her face. "Hate you... I hate you," she hissed.
Her mother chuckled, which turned to another wheezy cough, and nodded along to her daughter's reply. "You think I'm one of them... I might be. But I'm the only one... who gives a shit about you... anywhere. I'll make your aunt help you... she owes me... but if you want something from me, little bug... you ask now. Ask... while we have time," she wheezed, her words broken from the slurring of drink as much as her need to gasp for air.
Her daughter stayed where she was, still sniffling. The scowl faded by degrees, but her eyes remained wary -- and angry. "I want you to stop calling me that," she mumbled.
"Speak up--"
"Stop calling me that!" the girl shrieked, springing to her feet and stamping on the shirt that had been flung in her face. "Everyone calls me little bug and roach and worm! My name's Buddug! BUDDUG!"
Dizzy from the drink and the burst of fury, Buddug dropped back into her chair at her table, folding her arms over the creaky armrest and weeping hot tears. Over the ringing in her ears and the sound of her own sobs, she could still hear her mother coughing and laughing wheezily from her chair by the hearth.
Finally, she spoke. "Do you know what Buddug means? Did I... ever tell you...?"
Her daughter looked up with another scowl and shook her head. Her hazel eyes were moving again, worried, uncertain -- and assessing. The bottle by her mother's feet. The iron poker leaning by the hearth.
Her mother's smile turned sad as she watched her, and said, "It means winner. You think... you can win... against me... right now, as I am. Maybe you can... your aunt, she'll teach you that better. More than making and mending arms and armor... how to use them. But..." She leaned forward, stifling a cough, and pointed at her daughter. "...if you win against me... what next? What do you tell the monsters here? Can you win against them -- make them believe you...? Or do you run... run into the plains... or the Wilds, like your aunt... and take your chances with beasts, and marauders, and cold, and hunger, and sickness... Can you win against them? Or do you get squashed... underfoot... like a little bug?"
Buddug's only reply was a sniffle, wiping an arm across her face again.
"...That's what I thought, little bug... but, fine. I'll call you Buddug." The smile turned to a slow grin, unfocused gray eyes drifting slowly to the window, and she sighed. "...and maybe my sister breaks you sharp enough to make you win."
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Death Knell
- Proven Adventurer
- Posts: 203
- Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:10 pm
- Location: The Wilds
Axe
((Content Warning: Child Abuse, Alcoholism, Underage Alcohol Abuse.))
A few years later...
Life had not changed much for Buddug, in spite of all of the circumstances that had.
Her mother was dead. The smithy had been sold to a merchant from the plains, a man she did not like. She did not know why he eyed her so closely, but she knew enough to fear him. It was not the only reason she kept her distance from the smithy, nor felt wistful when her hazel eyes strayed that way.
They had built a cabin in a week, with help from their immediate neighbors. Fort Tiamori was not a warm or loving place: it was dirty and hard and as cold as the wind that blew from the east, across the burned and blackened plains. But a hungry orphan sleeping in the gutter with her alcoholic aunt, doing everything necessary to survive, would be a liability to the fort in myriad ways. So they helped them build a place to live.
But no one cared if the drunk hit the scrawny, coarse-mouthed girl who'd been left in her care. The warmest attention that the bruises on her wrists and her cheeks received was a sad kind of guilt, a look that came with a clear message, I cannot, will not, do anything about this. More common were gazes glazing over with disinterest, or the same kind of derision that they gave her aunt when they found her passed out with a bottle.
In spite of their judgment, her aunt played a valuable role for the hard-scrabble frontier fort. To the girl she was Aunt Dee, but to those who watched the walls and those few who ranged beyond them, she was Scout Cassadee Bwyell, or simply "Axe." She'd learned weapons out on the plains, where steel was the fastest (and bloodiest) path to silver and gold; and she'd learned the Wilds, and the monsters that prowled them, while hiding from the same marauders she used to ride alongside.
Fort Tiamori sat on the edge of the Far Wilds, bordered by the bloody plains of the Eastern Dominion, and the woman they called Axe helped protect them from dangers from either side. Among the militia that guarded Fort Tiamori -- mostly from within the relative safety of the palisade -- were a select number of scouts who ranged beyond, sometimes for days a time, patrolling the paths frequently used by the village and hunting down the beasts that posed the greatest threat.
The days when Cassadee was in the fort were the longest and most exhausting for young Buddug. No matter how much her aunt drank, they were always up early. Buddug helped Cassadee dress in her armor and weapons -- a chain shirt, a hide jerkin and leggings, studded boots and bracers, a spiked axe, a whip, a longbow, and a quiver, along with essential supplies. Every time a new piece was added, Cassadee moved around.
If there was a rattle of noise, Buddug paid for it.
Only when she could move silently, heavily laden and well protected, did she leave the cabin to talk to the other scouts at the fort and check the traps. Buddug took this time to fetch water, to chop and bring in wood, and to make breakfast; and if she had any time left over, she searched for her aunt's stash of rum.
Cassadee was wily, but occasionally she left something out. Usually it was when she passed out at home; then Buddug took the bottle for a quick swig, or filled an empty vial to tuck into her cot or bury outside the cabin, taking as much from the bottle as she dared.
If too much disappeared from the bottle, Buddug paid for it.
After breakfast they practiced, outside the cabin where straw had been spread over the muddy ground. She learned accuracy from her aunt with the crossbow, but all the while trained with the longbow to build the strength required for a full draw. She also learned the sword and the axe and the whip, how to fight with one hand or two, one weapon or two. She learned how to draw fast, block, and clench her teeth through the pain of a strike without dropping any weapons.
If a weapon was dropped, Buddug paid for it.
Next they cleaned any game from the traps, sore and tired as they were from sparring. Skinning the animal, carving the meat, separating each essential part and preparing them for use, and tanning the hide. Life was hard in Fort Tiamori, Cassadee stressed, but harder still in the Wilds; they had to push through and have the energy to work, or fight, after a long hunt; and there was nothing they could afford to spoil or waste.
If anything was spoiled or wasted, Buddug paid for it.
Afterwards, they took it in turns to make supper or deal with herbs and poultice-making
Seven mornings in a row, Cassadee had woken up hung over from the previous night, eyes still heavy and face sneering, her voice hoarse, her words mumbled and slurred. Every morning, she sat heavily on a stool beside their table, rising only when Buddug laced up her leggings. Then she sat heavily, hung her head, and produced a bottle of rum whenever her belt of supplies and poultices came out. One of the mornings she growled "hair of the dog," but the others she said nothing at all, simply left Buddug to find space for the bottle, wrap it so it would not make too much noise, and hang her head and shut her eyes--
--no matter how long it took her niece to prepare.
On the seventh morning, Buddug took an old brown medicine flask with her, long empty, when she went to help her aunt get dressed. It was a little more than she usually dared, but Cassadee was a little more drunk for her duties than she usually dared, too. It was enough for a few respites, an hour or two of comfortable and carefree numbness to punctuate the miserable days.
First she helped her into her leggings, her chain shirt, her jerkin, her boots and bracers. Then came the belt. She laid it out with care, and watched carefully -- holding her breath -- as her aunt patted herself down and drew the bottle of rum out of her shirt. There was not much left, and a risk in taking any, but less risk getting caught in the process with the noisy way it sloshed around.
She watched her aunt, hanging her head, eyes shut, silent as she tried to blot out the pain of the hangover. She made a show of unwrapping a rabbit fur, something soft to insulate and muffle it while her aunt carried it with her into the woods.
She checked on her aunt once more. Then she loosened the cork and brought up the empty flask, angling both bottles to minimize the noise. She'd become so focused on that noise that she missed the quiet hiss of a thin, stiletto-like knife scraping across the nearby workbench.
It wasn't until she saw her aunt began to twist in a familiar motion, towards a plunging strike, that she let out a cry of alarm and jerked her hand back.
If any liquor was spilled, Buddug paid for it.
Her aunt clapped a hand over her forearm, trapping it long enough for the blade to bite into her forearm, jerking back towards her wrist, and the cry of alarm turned to screams of pain. She threw herself to the ground and managed to writhe out of her aunt's grasp, and it was due as much to luck as Cassadee's precise aim that no major artery was was torn open in the process.
But the little knife had torn a jagged path on its way out of her skin, and it would leave a terrible scar. Buddug howled as she clutched it, her eyes too clouded with anguish to show the hatred deepening its roots in her heart, while her aunt crouched down to eye level. She seized her arm and poured the last splash from the rum bottle over the wound, and Buddug howled again. She staunched the bleeding with a wadded up cloth and firm pressure, and sought her crying niece's gaze as her own expression pulled into a terrible grin.
There was one more lesson to teach today than how to stitch up a debilitating wound.
"Patience, little bug. Now... I start teaching you patience."
A few years later...
Life had not changed much for Buddug, in spite of all of the circumstances that had.
Her mother was dead. The smithy had been sold to a merchant from the plains, a man she did not like. She did not know why he eyed her so closely, but she knew enough to fear him. It was not the only reason she kept her distance from the smithy, nor felt wistful when her hazel eyes strayed that way.
They had built a cabin in a week, with help from their immediate neighbors. Fort Tiamori was not a warm or loving place: it was dirty and hard and as cold as the wind that blew from the east, across the burned and blackened plains. But a hungry orphan sleeping in the gutter with her alcoholic aunt, doing everything necessary to survive, would be a liability to the fort in myriad ways. So they helped them build a place to live.
But no one cared if the drunk hit the scrawny, coarse-mouthed girl who'd been left in her care. The warmest attention that the bruises on her wrists and her cheeks received was a sad kind of guilt, a look that came with a clear message, I cannot, will not, do anything about this. More common were gazes glazing over with disinterest, or the same kind of derision that they gave her aunt when they found her passed out with a bottle.
In spite of their judgment, her aunt played a valuable role for the hard-scrabble frontier fort. To the girl she was Aunt Dee, but to those who watched the walls and those few who ranged beyond them, she was Scout Cassadee Bwyell, or simply "Axe." She'd learned weapons out on the plains, where steel was the fastest (and bloodiest) path to silver and gold; and she'd learned the Wilds, and the monsters that prowled them, while hiding from the same marauders she used to ride alongside.
Fort Tiamori sat on the edge of the Far Wilds, bordered by the bloody plains of the Eastern Dominion, and the woman they called Axe helped protect them from dangers from either side. Among the militia that guarded Fort Tiamori -- mostly from within the relative safety of the palisade -- were a select number of scouts who ranged beyond, sometimes for days a time, patrolling the paths frequently used by the village and hunting down the beasts that posed the greatest threat.
The days when Cassadee was in the fort were the longest and most exhausting for young Buddug. No matter how much her aunt drank, they were always up early. Buddug helped Cassadee dress in her armor and weapons -- a chain shirt, a hide jerkin and leggings, studded boots and bracers, a spiked axe, a whip, a longbow, and a quiver, along with essential supplies. Every time a new piece was added, Cassadee moved around.
If there was a rattle of noise, Buddug paid for it.
Only when she could move silently, heavily laden and well protected, did she leave the cabin to talk to the other scouts at the fort and check the traps. Buddug took this time to fetch water, to chop and bring in wood, and to make breakfast; and if she had any time left over, she searched for her aunt's stash of rum.
Cassadee was wily, but occasionally she left something out. Usually it was when she passed out at home; then Buddug took the bottle for a quick swig, or filled an empty vial to tuck into her cot or bury outside the cabin, taking as much from the bottle as she dared.
If too much disappeared from the bottle, Buddug paid for it.
After breakfast they practiced, outside the cabin where straw had been spread over the muddy ground. She learned accuracy from her aunt with the crossbow, but all the while trained with the longbow to build the strength required for a full draw. She also learned the sword and the axe and the whip, how to fight with one hand or two, one weapon or two. She learned how to draw fast, block, and clench her teeth through the pain of a strike without dropping any weapons.
If a weapon was dropped, Buddug paid for it.
Next they cleaned any game from the traps, sore and tired as they were from sparring. Skinning the animal, carving the meat, separating each essential part and preparing them for use, and tanning the hide. Life was hard in Fort Tiamori, Cassadee stressed, but harder still in the Wilds; they had to push through and have the energy to work, or fight, after a long hunt; and there was nothing they could afford to spoil or waste.
If anything was spoiled or wasted, Buddug paid for it.
Afterwards, they took it in turns to make supper or deal with herbs and poultice-making
Seven mornings in a row, Cassadee had woken up hung over from the previous night, eyes still heavy and face sneering, her voice hoarse, her words mumbled and slurred. Every morning, she sat heavily on a stool beside their table, rising only when Buddug laced up her leggings. Then she sat heavily, hung her head, and produced a bottle of rum whenever her belt of supplies and poultices came out. One of the mornings she growled "hair of the dog," but the others she said nothing at all, simply left Buddug to find space for the bottle, wrap it so it would not make too much noise, and hang her head and shut her eyes--
--no matter how long it took her niece to prepare.
On the seventh morning, Buddug took an old brown medicine flask with her, long empty, when she went to help her aunt get dressed. It was a little more than she usually dared, but Cassadee was a little more drunk for her duties than she usually dared, too. It was enough for a few respites, an hour or two of comfortable and carefree numbness to punctuate the miserable days.
First she helped her into her leggings, her chain shirt, her jerkin, her boots and bracers. Then came the belt. She laid it out with care, and watched carefully -- holding her breath -- as her aunt patted herself down and drew the bottle of rum out of her shirt. There was not much left, and a risk in taking any, but less risk getting caught in the process with the noisy way it sloshed around.
She watched her aunt, hanging her head, eyes shut, silent as she tried to blot out the pain of the hangover. She made a show of unwrapping a rabbit fur, something soft to insulate and muffle it while her aunt carried it with her into the woods.
She checked on her aunt once more. Then she loosened the cork and brought up the empty flask, angling both bottles to minimize the noise. She'd become so focused on that noise that she missed the quiet hiss of a thin, stiletto-like knife scraping across the nearby workbench.
It wasn't until she saw her aunt began to twist in a familiar motion, towards a plunging strike, that she let out a cry of alarm and jerked her hand back.
If any liquor was spilled, Buddug paid for it.
Her aunt clapped a hand over her forearm, trapping it long enough for the blade to bite into her forearm, jerking back towards her wrist, and the cry of alarm turned to screams of pain. She threw herself to the ground and managed to writhe out of her aunt's grasp, and it was due as much to luck as Cassadee's precise aim that no major artery was was torn open in the process.
But the little knife had torn a jagged path on its way out of her skin, and it would leave a terrible scar. Buddug howled as she clutched it, her eyes too clouded with anguish to show the hatred deepening its roots in her heart, while her aunt crouched down to eye level. She seized her arm and poured the last splash from the rum bottle over the wound, and Buddug howled again. She staunched the bleeding with a wadded up cloth and firm pressure, and sought her crying niece's gaze as her own expression pulled into a terrible grin.
There was one more lesson to teach today than how to stitch up a debilitating wound.
"Patience, little bug. Now... I start teaching you patience."
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