Guest Star:
Lady Mika Awaken beneath a ceiling of a sand-shaded canvas. For one lying down on a thick bedroll, it is beyond an outstretched arm’s reach. Leering amber light is spilling in from a tall slit between two walls of mildly-swaying cloth.
Take a deep breath. Curl the grisly fingers. Palms are veiled in gloves. Wiggle the toes tucked well in a pair of boots. The gray cloak of this prone folk shuffles about. Limbs are encouraged to work together with a desire for one to sit up. There is a stream of writhing in the nerves; it warrants a groan of discomfort, brief and whisper-like. What is causing the pain? And as the awareness of this reawakening settles further, another query for oneself: how much time has passed since the prior waking moment?
This corpse-looking man in gray is making sense of what is before and around him. Small crates with tufts of straw peeking up on the topmost wooden prism. Sacks poorly tied up inches below their openings are leaning on the bottom of the stack. Round splintered wooden shields, one of them being a bump away from being split into two, are also tilted upon the rest of the supplies. None of these things seem to be his.
Another pillow is next to his. A depression that can fit a head is on it. Give the crater a bit of stride of his wraithlike fingertips.
Minutes after the awakening, the man leaves the confinement of canvas through that opening between the pair of big loose curtains acting as doors. Green eyes, fair as a spring meadow, are soon greeted by a curious collage once out of the tent past a quenched campfire.
Discolored bones from once-living men and beasts make piles and clutter on unpaved earth, high and low, flat and curved, under a burning red sky. Distant flames are kindled by corpses with a small gathering of long weaponry either stabbed onto them or on the nearby ground. Smoke is rising from each blazing pile. Patches of bent grass brown as mud, petals, stamens and mushrooms too big and misshapen for their own good, and trees lacking even the tiniest leaf on any of their twisted branches and as ash-tinted as his cloak all in tandem suggest a considerable contradiction to an Eden.
On a wavy chest-high wall, a few black rats with wings fight among each on who gets a delectable meal: a plucked eye with scarlet strands behind the fleshly marble. A different kind of gathering is about a fifth of a mile from the lonesome fellow past the squawking scavengers in a squabble and the litter of remains. Hounds tall as the dead trees nearby standing on their hind legs, each of their heads as big as boulders. They are nuzzling their snouts down on something he cannot see clearly from he is standing. The choir of crunching perhaps sung through their maw that can swallow a wild boar whole adds to the menacing presence they have. Their own eyes, bright as the flames but richer in their red than the scarlet sky, may not bode well for others. Only a fool waiting to be food or a chew toy would dare to disturb them.
Even one such as he whose visage and stature behind gray rags belongs in a crypt is rather displeased with this loathsome landscape, even if by the slightest. Apathy is his façade. A lesser mind and heart would be drowning in dread for being thrown into this gruesome garden. Unease may haunt him a bit, but it is more of a small ember of confusion, perhaps curiosity. A different query soon prods on him something fierce. Why is he here?
While holding onto a shoulder with one of his hands, twisting the former gently to relieve it of strain, he musters what he can to recall what came to pass. It was in dead of night, the moon behind a crowd of thick clouds. Vague silhouettes of things moving, perhaps even people. Rumbles and gallops of boots and hooves. Crisp claps by blade or blunt upon flesh or metal. Grunts and yells of men before bestowing cruelty upon a foe. Growls and snarls freed by great beasts before a vigorous swat of claw-bearing limbs or a hearty bite of mouths with rows of flesh-tearing fangs in them.
The heart beats with a brisk pace, loud in its thump but only for the silent thinker. To swiftly fashion a moment of cruelty and chaos kindles the confusion further. He takes a series of slow deep breaths. The air in this place is rather foul but better than none to savor at all. Soon, his hands go about patting around his waists, rummaging through belt-held pouches, and soon on his chest beneath his cloak. Something in his person can perhaps be of aid to dull away the unrest in his mind.
Then comes a sweet sultry giggle of a woman.
“Looking for something, love?” a song-like disembodied voice asked. The inquisitive tone came with the allure of a maiden touting temptation.
The man in gray stops searching himself and slowly turns his head back before the rest of him follows. A conflict of disbelief and displeasure crashes onto his wraithlike face, brows all furrowed and those green eyes in a glare. Before he can spill anything, another deep breath is taken.
“Mika.”
A woman in an olive-green cloak is sitting on a high rocky ledge behind the tent the man awakened from and left out of. Although her face has smears of dirt on it, her elegance is piercing through the mess. Porcelain skin befits a princess at the least. Her long flowing black hair is braided to her left side and the rest in a bun with strands tucked behind one of her ears. Sharp scarlet red eyes are portraying unassailable confidence. Her ruby red lips are in a light smirk before they clamp on a held object of interest. If the thin cup-like end of the slender curved tool is provided with a tiny bit of flame down on the ground leaves tucked in it, a great moment of calm can be bestowed upon whoever is toking on it.
“You slept sweetly, my dear, like a baby. But I suppose it was necessary for what divine trait is coursing through you to let your wounds heal. Not much can be done being cursed to look like a corpse though. What a weird condition you have, really.”
“Why are we here and why do you even have that with y—... hang about, did you...?”
He tilts his head, brows firmly furrowed. Those green eyes are eagles on that thing in her hand and partly on her lips.
“Did you steal that from me when I was asleep?”
“Weeeellllllll... no,” she dragged her response perhaps a bit too long for his liking.
“It may have fallen off of you while you were being moved about.”
“Fallen off, mhm,” he muttered right after a whispered scoff.
Slowly, the man stands up, raising his left hand with an open palm in a glove.
“If you would not mind,” he calls out to her.
“My pipe. Please, give it back.”
Bare corpse-like fingers curl in and out together.
She frees the peace-bringing thing off her lips. She wags up and down the tip with a hole on it upon the beckoning fellow.
“Your limbs seem to be working well enough,” her choice to contest his demand.
“Come, join me up here and sit next to me, Grey. Please.”
Her left hand is softly patting on the dirt to her side.
“Why do I—?”
Mika interrupts Grey.
“—Humor me, Grey. I will answer what other silly questions you may have. I will even give this back to you, ready for your toking pleasure. That self-patting fuss you were on about was in search of this, yes?”
Her hand holding the pipe waved it about for a moment.
“But first, please...”
Lips and cheeks squirm to exude enunciation. There is even a bit of snarl in her sultry voice. Even her ledge-patting hand matches a downward stomp for each word.
“Get... up... here.”
Grey frees a defeated sigh. Mika giggles. She then brushes off the grains of dirt on her patting hand on her cloak.
“Much appreciated,” Mika thanked Grey who is halfway through his hike.
By the time he gets up there and less than a yard to her left, unease stirs in him again, just as much as knowing that she is in possession of his smoking pipe. Two double-edge blades in their respective scabbards, one being a longsword and the other a dagger, are resting behind Mika. Oh, those brows of his furrow and his eyes narrow. Dispel away the sudden rise of frustration, lest be compelled to do something to the maiden too crude for his own good.
“Did those fall off of me as well?”
He nearly growled when he spilled the query.
“No, I relieved you of them while you were dreaming of things,” she confessed without hesitation. One hand is holding the bottom of the pipe bowl while the other has her slim fingers kneading on each other’s tips inches above the chamber. She keeps the thing half a foot away from her prettiest visage. Eyes go back and forth in their gaze between those tiny limbs at work and the dwarfish cauldron inches directly below them.
“But only for safe-keeping and to spare your dear spine of further sorrow while you were sleeping soundly. You and I have our... differences, sure. But I have not the desire to cross you by means of petty theft. Come and reclaim them, please.”
She mumbles something, a foreign phrase of sorts. Tiny sparks trickle away from her kneading fingers and down into the bowl like tiny embers. The dry brown clump in the chamber is set ablaze like thin remarkably bright orange roots. As soon as she swings back the tip of the tool with the bore on it, Mika indulges in a deep toke. The heat from the stream of searing mist invigorates her senses. A few seconds after puffing in, a slim wall of smoke is freed from the corner of her slightly open mouth, obscuring the horizon a bit.
“Well, how kind of you,” his sardonic way to thank her with a small wedge of sincerity tucked in it. Before honoring her foremost request, he picks up both weapons. He straps them well on his person, the longsword on his back and the dagger behind him, mingling with the thick leather belt around his waist.
Another blade in a sheath, thinner than even the dagger is resting on the other side of the damsel. If given the chance, amazing and atrocious art can be performed through it by the cloaked damsel.
Grey finally sits down next to her. Mika soon passes him the pipe. Her face portrays endearment through a comforting smile. Grey obliges her willful parting of his possession with a nod of his head, the pipe soon in his grasp. Lips so dreadfully different from the damsel compliments his mummified mug. What storm of sorrows he had to brave to end up being such a living blasphemy to beauty, perhaps he can share those tragic tales when privy to a better time.
Grey delights himself with a hearty toke of his pipe. Mika leans the side of her head on his nearest cloaked-veiled arm. The man in gray does not mind her intimate deed. While they are at odds from time to time, maybe even margins more than sometimes, their alliance when honored has proven to bear the sweet fruit of duties fulfilled with high praises. Grey conjures his own small tower of freed smoke, soothing his writhing nerves and ailing mind. There are still things to consider, and questions that need answers.
“Why are we here, Mika? What business do we have in this province?”
Grey shares his pipe again.
“Were we not in somewhere less... red? I recall visions of a battle. I presume that I was a part of it. Did we forsake it? Did I forsake it? Or did I muse over madness which did not occur?”
Mika does not deny his charity, relieving him of his peace-bringing tool.
“It did occur, love. Forsaken it, well... it is less so a ‘yes’ and more so a ‘no.’ It is quite a twisted tale. A few things happened along the way leading to our refuge here.”
Mika reenacts the soothing deed from half a minute ago with the pipe in hand.
“Well, I relish a tale. So, do regale me of what I may have forgotten or missed.”
“Very well, Grey darling.”
Both man and woman are perusing the peculiar land. The small pack of giant beasts at the distance are feasting well on a cluster of bloody corpses. Drag marks of the feast can be seen from further down to the back of one of them. The red sky can make one with sensitive eyes squint or reject a stark gaze above, such a hellscape with its hazy hellish hue. Until thoughts are well-sorted and writhing nerves are no longer a bother, Sir Grey and Lady Mika enjoy each other’s company in an Eden for the wicked.
