Eyes
Author: je
Title: Eyes
Story: Cryptomancy
Rating: PG I guess? Reference to past violence, not explicit
Challenges: Candy Apple #1: Eyes
Word Count: 492
Summary: A little something about Bug.
Notes: Bug, for those just joining me, is an orphan in the Rookery that Chaill has just met. I'm skipping over the events that led to his staying at the Red Tower, because I'm more interested in writing about Bug and her eyes (or lack thereof).
The only sounds were the hollow clanging of the copper stairs between our feet and the sloshing of water over the lip of my pail. Bug carried her own pail, laden with meat and meal, and we staggered up the stairs to where the crows lived. I had been made to carry the water because it was heavier, and I was new, and besides that I was a boy and so I ought to be able to carry more. That was what Bug had said, at any rate, and I had little choice but to take her at her word.
For the first few days she hadn’t said much of anything. Bug was the sort of girl that didn’t trust easy; besides, I was, as already stated, new. She’d shown me the things that were expected of me at the Rookery, and I’d only said as much as was needed. I wasn’t sure I trusted a girl without eyes, myself.
Finally, I suppose curiosity won out, or at the very least hatred of silence. “How did you know?” I asked. I could have finished the question with almost anything. How did you know I had come to Heart’s-Desire? How did you know my father had died? How did you know I am all alone?
“At first, I heard your voice on the wind,” she said, continuing laboriously up the stairs. For a moment, I thought that was all she would say, and I might have replied with another question had I not been too confused to speak. My pail sloshed loudly, and Bug’s breath rasped in her throat, the sound of a fingertip drawn over silk. An eternity later, she added, “I get so used to the music of the forest. When something new comes in, it is a revelation.”
“But how could you hear me from so far away?”
She stopped, only two stairs ahead of me, and I nearly slammed into her from behind. I managed not to, though I felt her breath on my face when she turned. “Nowhere is really too far away,” she said. “You’ll know soon. The Lady means to teach you things.”
I couldn’t help but stare at Bug’s ratty blindfold. “Like she taught you?”
The color drained from her face and the corners of her lips twisted down. In the same instant, a look of serenity returned to the part of her face that I could see. She turned again, and hefted her pail along before her with her knee. “She did teach me,” she finally said. “And I’m glad she took my eyes. I never really knew how to use them, anyway.”
I tried to picture what Bug’s face might have looked like before. Jenny Three-toes in the kitchens said that Bug had used to have big blue eyes that never blinked. That was why Lady Bloodrose cut them out, she said. She said Bug saw too much. Now she didn’t see anything.
Edit: sorry, my cut broke D:
Title: Eyes
Story: Cryptomancy
Rating: PG I guess? Reference to past violence, not explicit
Challenges: Candy Apple #1: Eyes
Word Count: 492
Summary: A little something about Bug.
Notes: Bug, for those just joining me, is an orphan in the Rookery that Chaill has just met. I'm skipping over the events that led to his staying at the Red Tower, because I'm more interested in writing about Bug and her eyes (or lack thereof).
The only sounds were the hollow clanging of the copper stairs between our feet and the sloshing of water over the lip of my pail. Bug carried her own pail, laden with meat and meal, and we staggered up the stairs to where the crows lived. I had been made to carry the water because it was heavier, and I was new, and besides that I was a boy and so I ought to be able to carry more. That was what Bug had said, at any rate, and I had little choice but to take her at her word.
For the first few days she hadn’t said much of anything. Bug was the sort of girl that didn’t trust easy; besides, I was, as already stated, new. She’d shown me the things that were expected of me at the Rookery, and I’d only said as much as was needed. I wasn’t sure I trusted a girl without eyes, myself.
Finally, I suppose curiosity won out, or at the very least hatred of silence. “How did you know?” I asked. I could have finished the question with almost anything. How did you know I had come to Heart’s-Desire? How did you know my father had died? How did you know I am all alone?
“At first, I heard your voice on the wind,” she said, continuing laboriously up the stairs. For a moment, I thought that was all she would say, and I might have replied with another question had I not been too confused to speak. My pail sloshed loudly, and Bug’s breath rasped in her throat, the sound of a fingertip drawn over silk. An eternity later, she added, “I get so used to the music of the forest. When something new comes in, it is a revelation.”
“But how could you hear me from so far away?”
She stopped, only two stairs ahead of me, and I nearly slammed into her from behind. I managed not to, though I felt her breath on my face when she turned. “Nowhere is really too far away,” she said. “You’ll know soon. The Lady means to teach you things.”
I couldn’t help but stare at Bug’s ratty blindfold. “Like she taught you?”
The color drained from her face and the corners of her lips twisted down. In the same instant, a look of serenity returned to the part of her face that I could see. She turned again, and hefted her pail along before her with her knee. “She did teach me,” she finally said. “And I’m glad she took my eyes. I never really knew how to use them, anyway.”
I tried to picture what Bug’s face might have looked like before. Jenny Three-toes in the kitchens said that Bug had used to have big blue eyes that never blinked. That was why Lady Bloodrose cut them out, she said. She said Bug saw too much. Now she didn’t see anything.
Edit: sorry, my cut broke D: