Ser Raffie Rafael-
Mum n I cudnt agre on how yer nem spelt. The gran sed hee nuit, so I hop its clos at lest. Im sposd to bles you in the nems of the gods but I duno howta spel eny gods atal and if I spel em rong mebe thel be mad so. No gods. But bles you althe sem innit.
I go to markit now animor becus Mum dusnt want mee to go steelin. I told er I wudnt but its no us so I just do as shee ses laik you akst. Shee ses hulo aswel. Its the gran in the cornr teechin mee raitin hee dusnt rait so I duno owhee dus it but Mum ses to lern so Im duin that laik you akst. And eniway shees my Mum so I do it my frends cant atal so I dunt sho of onlee mmeb mebb I jus dunt then eniway.
Wen ar you visitin becus I want to tak to you agin laik how you shod me yer way of opnin botls also purs but no steelin becus Mum wud be a ful raiut eniway. Also Meree an Ponee Mary an Bunny ses hulo. Bunny laik the wee creetcher Shee didnt meen for mee to rait that sory. Plees visit thak you.KulleeKuhloch
Also gods bles you agin an suchlaik. Mum sed so. Also shee ses hulo or bai Im not serten of wich. The gran dusnt say boo but I think hee laikt it wen you were heer. So visit him aswel.
Karri bit the insides of her lips with a short sigh as she folded the letter. Her hands sank to her lap, and she looked into the small, but crackly fireplace at the center of the cottage. She heard her battered wooden front door, such as it was, open and shut. The strong scents of sweat, straw, and excrement, underscored gently by those of open fields, metal, and grain, struck her nose. There were a few moments during which Keri heard nothing but the shuffling of paper, and she knew that her interception would itself be caught.
Sure enough, a few moments after the rustling of paper stopped, a young wiry teenage boy stepped from the front room to the hearth room and crossed his harshly tanned, muscular arms over his chest. "Well?"
The voice, just as sharp as his father's had ever been, snapped Karri out of her musing. There was a tinge of impatience to it that made the dark hued woman's skin itch.
"Well what?" she shot back without turning around to meet her elder son's eyes.
"Are you going to hand that over?" the teenager asked. "It's not for you; you know it and I know it. Why it's here in the first place is anybody's guess."
"It was thought, somehow, that he came with me," Karri frowned. "Not sure why, but his name was even read aloud at the docks, as though he'd come ashore."
Kirk scoffed, rubbing some of the soreness out of his shoulders absent-mindedly. "Sold his passage, perhaps. Some fool running about with his name, now. Or perhaps only claimed to be himself long enough to get here. Big enough place for some ill-fated foreigner to break a bad spell off clean, make a new start. Anyway, gimme the man's letter; he isn't here, and he won't be coming."
Karri's face darkened further, and she crossed her own arms over her chest with the letter clutched tightly. "You don't know-"
The young man behind Karri raised his eyebrows, which caused some of the caked dirt on his forehead to crack away from it. "You're joking- 'You don't know'? You can't really have thought that he was going to come and play house with us. Come and put me in my place, or something?" He shook his head with another short puff of bitter laughter, then held out his right hand expectantly "Give it, Mama; give me his letter so I can-"
It was all Karri could do not to rush over to her firstborn and slap him. "First of all, Kirk Arthur Nglend, you have no business speaking to me that way, and-"
"You have no business going through my mail as though that man is going to write you- he can't, didn't you say that yourself? And even if he could, would he?" Kirk charged, momentarily clenching his fists at his sides. The muscles that clung desperately to his still-childish frame thickened and slackened in turns. "I know I wouldn't, in his shoes."
"Oh ho, your mail! How dare you, you thankless whelp!" Karri exclaimed. "I don't care who says what about what, you are the child here! And what do you know about-"
Kirk tried to swallow, but his jaw and throat were both too tight. He closed his eyes and spoke through gritted teeth. "I know plenty, because three days after you just bundled yourself up and left, like Harold, I went to Beausace and demanded any information about your departure that she knew, anything she even suspected. I told her that Lamar and I were in pieces, because we were. There we'd been- me trying to actually talk to you, Lamar throwing himself around you- I told your lady that we begged you to think, to wait, to at least be safe, while this shiftless stranger stood like a pillar and watched the show. You left; just picked up your skirts around you as though we were so much dust to be shaken off- I had to carry Lamar back here in my arms like if he were half as old as he is. And because this is my house- take it up with your good mistress if you think it's not- Beausace repented, and told me everything. Everything, including the part where you looked happy to take part in this madness. Absolutely chuffed, thrilled to bits, downright fiendishly pleased to smash whatever might've been left of that unsuspecting man to dust, and for what? For an old crazy mage's experiment? She even showed me your letters to her about the matter, as soon as each one arrived into her hands. Told me I should be happy for you. That you were finally recovering from what Harold did to you. That you wouldn't be lonely anymore, as if your loneliness is any of her or my concern."
"If you don't care about me or how I feel, at least pretend you do, for pity's sake," Karri retorted. She'd wanted it to sound like a demand instead of a plea, but her voice wouldn't obey her. "And don't say your father's name like that, as though he were no kin to you."
"That man isn't kin to me, because he chose not to be. He left you without a coin to your name. Left Lamar and I with heads full of lies and hearts full of broken promises- fine apprenticeships and travel and loving guidance- absolute nonsense that he had no intention of ever fulfilling, since he never wanted us, or you, to begin with. Left me with his job- brushing down horses, and mucking stalls, and scrubbing pen walls, and running down stray goats, and skinning foxes so's the lady of the land can ride her pretty, pampered filly, and have milk and eggs and fresh made fur coats whensoever she snaps her thin, pale fingers." Kirk coughed out a laugh so bitter that it pierced Karri's heart. "He's lucky I call him his name, and not worse."
Karri turned her back on Kirk's frustration. "So in some strange revenge on your father, and now on me, you've sent Lamar halfway across the country to be apprenticed. I come back, and my second born is simply gone, as though he'd been stolen by Semmites! I know you both better than you think. He'll hate it, and you."
Kirk shrugged, unbothered by Karri's solemn opinion. "He's welcome to hate me; I hope he's got the balls to, actually. It's the family pass time, all of us hating the piss out of each other; he's got a right to do it, and if he ever sets pen to paper to tell me how much he hates me, I'll write him back just the same. You didn't tell me anything about why you were leaving, how long you'd be gone, or what you expected me to do in the meantime, remember? As far as I knew, I was the only responsible person left in the house. Day in, day out, Lamar and I looking at each other across the table trying to figure out what in all the hells to do now that both our parents had abandoned us- do you think that was fun? Do you think I enjoyed that as much as you enjoyed warming that washout soldier's lap? For some bloody daft old mage? Gods, save us- give me the letter and let's be done with this whole matter."
"I should throw it in the fire; then what?" Karri spat back, trying to catalyze her guilt into true anger.
"Power is power, isn't it?" Kirk snapped suddenly. His anger, as real and sharp as any weapon, made a tremor of fear shoot up his mother's spine. "Agency, any meager scrap of actual choice you can hold on to- and control! Over Harold, Lamar, me, Beausace, this Rafael, now. You'd do anything to make anybody feel as bound, pushed around and helpless as you always are, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, how dare you!" Karri whispered tensely, standing up and whirling around with tears in her eyes. "It hasn't been easy, you know! You've got years to go before you can even pretend to be as bitter about this lot in life as I deserve to be! Yet I choose to take opportunities where I can; I choose to find the good in things, even when it's difficult."
"The good?" Kirk tilted his head a bit, as though a household pet had done something mildly amusing. "This, then, is good? This is the way of the Bright Lord, you standing there with a letter stolen from another fatherless child, written to a half-broken man to whom you lied since the minute you met him? Is this what the priests taught you is 'good'?"
"Don't speak to me like that; I'm still your mother," Karri spat, tossing the letter to the floor. "There, you venom-tongue bruiser; fetch it if you want it."
"Everything I have is yours, Mama. Including the venom tongue." Kirk sighed deeply and picked the crushed letter up, tucking it into the band of his beat up work apron. "We live in a house that Beausace affords us in exchange for my work, an arrangement older than I am, originally made with Harold. And both of us work our fingers to the bone to repay the debt that isn't ours, while Harold himself either walks free or lies dead somewhere. Then suddenly, poof- I'm alone. All I could think of was how to give Lamar a chance to get away from here- any chance at all. I found him the farthest apprenticeship I could because I feared that you wouldn't come back, that Beausace would saddle Lamar with your part of the debt, and find him some idiot menial job in which he'd be forced to pretend to work it off. It wasn't revenge. It was fear. But I'm not sorry for it, and while you're just as free to hate me all you like as Lamar is, you know that you have no one to blame for my decision but yourself."
Karri snorted. "I should slap your face."
"Go ahead, if it makes you feel better," Kirk replied honestly. "Though I doubt the back of your hand could hurt me more than the back hooves of Beausace's mannerless horse, which you know I've taken straight to the chest more than once now."
Karri gritted her teeth at the memory of Lamar staring at her from his bed roll, across the room, while Kirk slept fitfully between them, unconsciously groaning in pain. Rafa's words about how much he could tell her sons loved her by how they held her and spoke to her rang discordantly in her ears.
"If I'd had daughters, you'd have both had to stay by me and stick this out," she finally said sadly, as she stared into the heart of the fire.
"Oh perfect; either three miserable women trapped in a house they'll never own, or one miserable woman here and two miserable women married off to men with more coin than sense. If there were any gods at all, I'd thank them for sparing us that." Kirk moved cautiously to his mother's side and sat down on the floor next to her when she didn't make a move to hit him in any way. "I did send Lamar a letter so soon as you arrived home. So he'll know you didn't really leave us, and I expect that will help. He's excellent at weaving, despite the bullies who call it women's work. It'll be peaceful for him, at least- carding wool, spinning, making beautiful things. He'll settle his head. Might come back to us when the sheep are slaughtered, might not. We were angry- I'm still angry- but we didn't stop worrying about you or loving you. It was a shock. I'll recover. He probably will too. In the meantime, we'll send this on, and mend some wounds instead of making more. That's what we can do in this wretched life. Mend more wounds than we make. I don't need some priest to tell me that. Neither do you."
"Kirk," Karri whispered, closing her eyes and letting the tears that were standing in them slip down her cheeks. "I'm lonely. No mage made me do it. Beausace couldn't have forced me- she told me I could refuse. But I'm damned lonely, and I wanted to be beautiful again. To be wanted, chased, lusted after. It's filthy, but it's true. I haven't been beautiful in years."
Kirk could find nothing to say. His chest tightened with all the things he knew he shouldn't say- that Harold was a fool to leave her, that her parents were wrong to shove her off onto a poor, worthless abuser like him, that she had always been beautiful, that no one's esteem or lack of it could change that. But the fact was that she was sitting with a son who had been compelled to run the household as soon as he'd turned the tender age of thirteen, and no man had showed any type in interest in her since Harold left. The shame of playing father to some other man's children had seen to that.
"We'll find some man to get you out of here," Kirk managed, despite not believing a word. "He'll pay your part in full and take you, and you'll live fine together. But this man- he wasn't it. Even he knew he wasn't, when he stood there looking at us like he did."
Karri looked over at Kirk, and the two surprised each other by catching each other's gaze. There was a long, heavy silence during which feelings too vast for words slid themselves around, between, and through mother and son.
"I'm sorry it wasn't him, Mama," Kirk said quietly.
"I'm sorry I did what I did when I finally admitted that to myself," Karri replied, looking away from her firstborn and into the heart of the fire. "It hurts. Being lonely. That's what made me do it. And I can't take it back."
Kirk spent a few moments looking at his mother's profile, then turned to the fire himself.
"He what, left?"
"In a way, yes. Sometimes it seems like my fate. Being left."
"Not me."
Karri looked back at her son, and saw the makings of his father in his face. The squint of his eyes, the squareness of his jaw, even the stiffness in his upper back. She said nothing, but turned back to the fire, an aching in her chest. A knowing that some girl would find him attractive, perhaps already had, but that he was either knowingly allowing such chances to pass him by or not paying any heed to their existence. An awareness that he had fully committed to the responsibility, older and larger than he, that his father had left behind, that said responsibility was putting its claws into him- aging him, draining him- and that she was part of that responsibility.
"If you just give me a moment to compose myself," she breathed, "I'll have dinner started. I'm sorry I didn't start it as soon as I got home. It would have been done by now, if-"
"You've been composing yourself all this while," Kirk smiled grimly as he got up. "I'm going down to the docks; do you need any spices or special fix-its to cook?"
Karri shook her head without saying anything, and listened to the front door open and shut. She briefly considered allowing her skirts to catch fire, then thought of how painful it would probably be to burn alive. With a sigh, she got up to remind herself of what vegetables she'd been permitted to take home from Beausace's manse.
