Pancakes
dripping with syrup, three strips of bacon, four links of sausage and a fried
egg lay across Deborah's plate while her fork and knife dug into each piece so
that she could eat them greedily. L’lorne
had a cup of coffee, still steaming hot, in front of her, untouched since she
ordered it.
An elderly
waitress stepped up to ask if there would be anything else, but L’lorne waved
her off before she could speak. The
woman nodded an acknowledgment and moved to talk with a fat man in a tattered
tee shirt and overalls.
"So,
what's his name?"
L’lorne
shook her head clear slightly.
"Who?"
"The
man you're looking for," Deborah repeated.
"What's his name?"
"Oh,"
L’lorne smiled. "I'm surprised you
remembered that much. You were pretty
tired."
"Yeah,
I guess so. Walking for seven hours does
that to a person." Deborah bit a
link of sausage in half. In the
background, the old cook called out for another order. "So are you going to tell me or
not?"
Llonre
considered not. His real name wouldn't
make any sense to her, and Ritch 'arrd would be even more confusing, that is
unless she used an acceptable substitute.
"Richard," she finally said.
"Cute
name."
"Yeah,
I suppose." A skinny girl dressed
in black entered with her boyfriend and the two sat down the booth behind
Deborah. He squealed as she kissed him,
long and deep, as he ran his fingers through her brown hair that had been
messily dyed black.
"So
was it love at first sight?"
Deborah had finished off the eggs and was halfway through the
pancakes. "Did he just show up one
day, sweep you off your feet and you both ran off to fall in love?"
"I
think you've been watching too many movies," L’lorne teased. Her finger fiddled with the rim of the cup in
front of her. "No, we didn't fall
in love right away. I'm not even sure he
knew we'd fall in love." The
statement hung there for a moment, until the woman at the end of the counter
knocked her glass onto the floor with a crash.
The fat man got up and tried to help the red head as she desperately
tried to apologize for the accident to the waitress. L’lorne took the opportunity to move the
conversation along. "I was looking
to expand my horizons, learn about the world.
He was," she paused for the right term. "Looking for an apprentice."
"Apprentice? Is that like something to do with wizards and
stuff?"
"Something
like that." Actually, it wasn't too
far off, but only in a very broad sense.
"He wanted to teach someone everything he learned, and he found me."
"Then
you fell in love?"
L’lorne's
finger dipped into the coffee and began to stir the steam around. "Eventually."
Deborah
finished off her pancakes and settled back into her seat. "You make it sound so boring."
"Hardly
boring. Never a dull moment with him,
unless I wanted one, which wasn't often."
L’lorne replayed some of the better events, watching as she and Ritch
'arrd went about their own version of romance, and all the steps of love.
"Isn't
that hot?"
L’lorne
shook herself out and noticed that her finger was in the coffee. "Ah, no, not really." She pushed it to the side, away from
Deborah's eyes.
"Geez,
you must really have loved him, you're daydreaming about him."
The girl
wasn't wrong, and L’lorne gave a wry smile to agree. "I did, I really did."
"So
what happened? You had a fight?"
No, if it
had been a fight, the universe would have known about it. "We had a falling out over something
that doesn't bear repeating." She
couldn't bear repeating it. In fact, she
couldn't even bear remembering it.
"Come
on, it couldn't have been that bad."
Yes, it
could. In her mind, L’lorne could see
the memory of the event, blocked out by a giant black seal, locked away and
inaccessible. All the mental tools to
carve her way through were available, but she declined to use them, she knew
better. Behind the block was something
so terrible that even she couldn't face it and stay in control. Even so, that memory still played havoc on
her, emanating emotions, sad and angry emotions right through her, warning
signs of what was behind the block.
"I don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Alright." The waitress returned and began gathering the
plates and cups. As she did, the girl in
black starting yelling for service and when there was no immediate response,
she began complaining very loudly about the poor quality of the diner and
waitress’ ability. The old waitress
simply shook her head and finished her task, ignoring the woman's complaints.
With the
table bare, Deborah leaned across it so she was nearer L’lorne. "You're looking for him to make up,
right?"
No, she
wasn't. No matter what the bulk of her
memories said, L’lorne wasn't looking to make up. He had gone beyond that point, gone to a
place where she could never, ever forgive him.
The only choice she had anymore was when she found him whether she would
let him live, and she wasn't sure there was much choice there either. "Maybe, we'll see."
---------
L’lorne
nearly collapsed onto the hard granite surface of the mountain. Muscles she didn't know existed ached from
the excursion of climbing up to the top of this boulder that was bigger than
anything she had ever seen or even heard of before.
"Tired?" He was already here, standing a short
distance away, staring at the landscape around them. She said nothing, more concerned with
reclaiming her breath and reconsidering whether following him was a good idea
in the first place. "That's
alright. I'm surprised you actually made
it up here. Well, maybe not surprised,
but you've got spirit, and you'll need it later."
His hand
surprised her shoulder and he held it there for a moment. Her energy seemed to grow, her breath
returned and she felt stronger than she had ever felt before. L’lorne stood tall as the hand left and took
a deep, relaxing breath. "Oh,
that's better."
"Of
course it is." He led her to the
edge where he had previously been standing and waved his hand over the
landscape. "Wonderful sight isn't
it?"
"Yeah,
never seen anything like it before."
He smiled
and then whispered into her ear.
"This is nothing." L’lorne
looked at him with a bit of confusion.
"Nothing. This landscape is
a spec so small compared to what I will show you that it is, in fact, nothing. This mountain, that one, the fields over
there, the trees," he pointed to each as he spoke. "Are nothing."
She cracked
a small chuckle. "You mean we came
all this way just to look at nothing?"
"Ah,"
he said with no small amount of pride.
"No, of course not. There
are many reasons to come here. The first
is to see if you could make it, and if you would try to make it. I don't think you questioned any of it until
you got up here, and that is worth quite a bit to me." The smile he grew with that sentence sent a
chill through L’lorne. There was
something there she couldn't quite understand, but she knew it was there. "Another reason is for your first
lesson. Now, touch the rock of the
mountain. Go ahead."
L’lorne did
so, bending over and rubbing her hand along the smooth yet rough rock. She told him so.
"Feels
solid, doesn't it?"
Her nod was
interrupted halfway through as she continued to move her hands along the rock
face. "It feels solid, it looks
solid, but, it really isn't, is it?"
He motioned
her to stand up and pointed to a mountain in the distance. "Watch." A single beat followed, and a chunk of rock
snapped off and triggered a landslide into the ground far below.
"Wow." Honest amazement, the sight of such a large
amount of seemingly solid stone slipping off like that took her breath away for
the second time today.
"It's
not solid, none of it is. Beneath the
surface are cracks and fissures that one can't see. You can feel them, a little, but you can't
see them. You don't know when one is
just going to give way though." He
turned her toward him and looked right into her eyes. "I am going to teach you how to see the
cracks, know when they're going to give way, know how to repair them, and how
to cause them."
"But
you said this mountain is nothing."
He
chuckled. "There is more beneath the
surface of everything than can be seen at first glance." He turned around and headed away.
"Where
are you going?"
"Back
down," he called out. L’lorne let
out a groan. "You can stay if you
like," he looked back with a smile.
"Of course, that chunk of rock you're standing on might just slip
and break off if you do."
Her eyes
grew big for a moment, and then shrunk back.
"You bastard," she muttered and followed after him.
---------
Questions
1. What kind of person is Lcorn Llorne? What does she look like (in your mind)?
2. What kind of person is the Deborah Ignigus? What does she look like (in your mind)?
3. Does the setting seem fitting? Would you like to know more?
4. What do you think Ritch 'arrd did to make L'lorn so angry?
5. From what little has been said so far, where do you think L'lorn is from.
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