She dropped the quill distractedly, flipping her book open heedlessly, uncaring of the page.The Care and Cleaning of Medieval Weaponswas not a topic that particularly interested her, not to the degree that she would choose an entire book on the subject, but it was a book from her father’s shelf, one he’d pored over several dozen times that she could remember. One he’d held in his hands, when he’d still been there to remind her that bad times never lasted forever, and despite the fairness of her skin and her preference for the indoors, the sun would always break through the heavy clouds of melancholy that had enveloped her since she was a teen.
She was so distracted and eager to quiet her mind that she nearly missed the words that bled up from the parchment.
We have over a hundred different loose-leaf selections.
Harper blinked in confusion as the words appeared beneath her own.Maybe it’s an ad. Some automated response.She bit her lip, taking up the quill.The green wellness tea. Please. To her shock, the writing continued, dispelling her assumption of an automated advertisement.
If you are interested in blade craft, there are some excellent selections on the shelf above the mounted wolpertinger.
The green wellness tea,she tried again.
I would suggest a flinty Pu’er to complement the
“I just want the green wellness tea.”
Her voice seemed over-loud in the quiet dining room, flummoxed that the scroll was talking to her like an actual flesh-and-blood server. The writing had stopped, the scroll’s previous, interrupted sentence left incomplete, and for a long, yawing moment, nothing happened. Nothing more appeared on the scroll after she voiced her declaration, and Harper wondered if she was going to be served at all.One more thing you’ve spoiled. You can’t even order in a restaurant without fucking things up. Ilea’s right. Failure ought to be an expectation by now.
“I-I said I want the–”
“No.” The voice was a hiss from the long shadows around her table, seeming to rise up from the floor, curling and settling around her shoulders until she’d shivered.
“But–”
“You’re not allowing yourself to enjoy the unique experience here,” it continued. “I really have to intervene. Now, is your interest in blade craft purely academic? There are some interesting instructional tomes on forging right over—”
“My father was a bladesmith,” she blurted, unsure of why she was responding to the shadowed corner across the table as if there was a flesh and blood server standing before her. “He made beautiful weapons. Like, by hand, at a forge. I-I took fencing in school, but I don’t know anything about bladecraft. I mean, Ido, because I grew up around it, but like . . . academically. Not in practice. He’s dead now.”
Heat enveloped her, and tears burned at her eyes. Harper realized she was babbling. She didn’t know why she was telling the empty corner about her father. She was unsure of why she was indulging the mysterious voice from the darkness.You shouldn’t be talking to the shadows at all!And they certainly shouldnothave been talking back, let alone scolding her for being a boring, predictable order.
“I see,” the voice slid and curled like a serpent as it mused. “I am terribly sorry for your loss. Was it recent?”
She was unable to talk about her father without crying. She had learned as a teen that her overly emotional responses were too big, too much, making everyone around her uncomfortable, starting with her grandmother, and so she tried to avoid them. She couldn’t talk about her father without crying, and so she avoided talking about him at all costs, for there would be no emotional response as big and noisy and mortifying as the ocean of grief that rocked inside her.Too late.The tears were already falling.
“N-no. It was l-last year.”
A sigh, like a whorl of smoke around her. “That is incredibly recent, little one. Barely a moment ago. Did you help him in his forge when he worked? When you were younger?”
“I-I did.” Her throat was still thick and her cheeks were still damp, but the admission made the corners of her mouth life, in spite of herself. “I would hand him tools. I’ll always love the smell of hot coals and woodsmoke, I think. I didn’t know the books here were things we could read?” She sucked in a deep breath, desperately trying to redirect herself, to avert her emotions, an exercise she’d practiced with her mother a hundred million times.
“Yes, you can. Yes, I think I understand very well now. Let’s see . . . how long are you planning on staying with us?”
Her jaw hung open as she floundered, unable to speak, despite her verbal deluge of thirty seconds prior, wondering if the voice was able to divine the question that had been hanging over her since she overheard the conversation between her mother and Ilea.How long are you planning on staying with us? That’s anyone’s guess.
“Do you have someplace to be?” the voice tried again. It, whatever it was, asked the question as if it were changing tactics, attempting to cajole her into actually answering like a normal person.
Whether she ought to have been talking to it or not, the strange voice had a dark resonance that pressed her into her seat and made her stomach swoop. She ought to be frightened, ought to be cautious and looking for an escape, but Harper couldn’t deny she was intrigued, her black thoughts momentarily abating.
“I never have any place to be,” she choked out on a scoff, listening as the strange voice harrumphed.
“Well then, that informs our selection for the day, does it not? There, just past that ivory candelabra . . . go on, it’s not going to jump off the shelf on its own.”
She realized belatedly the strange, curling voice was giving her a direction, and there was little she loved more than being told what to do, freed from the chore of thinking and making decisions. Jumping up, Harper hurried to obey. It was strange taking orders from a menu, but that didn’t stop her from doing exactly what it said.
“Here?”
“Yes, right there. On the shelf above it. There’s a red-bound book . . . yes, that’s the one. Good girl. Now, settle in. Page 327. I’ll get your tea started.”
If she were anywhere else, she might have been mortified by the way her spine shivered, her core clenching.You were just blubbering thirty seconds ago!Perhaps, she considered, it was because of her emotional outburst. She felt raw and oversensitive, so it should have been no surprise that she was reacting to every bit of stimuli. Calling her agood girlwas the fastest way to drench her panties, and doing so in combination with freeing her from the arduous task of thinking was her personal catnip.
