Balgees and Marrow

Two meet in a town far away from home. A chance encounter that leaves both of them different.

Nobody notices the swordsman sitting by the darkest corner window, drinking her beer.

 

 

But the boy from the big front table does. He keeps looking at her, bobbing and weaving through his rowdy friends, amidst the blaring music, the human bodies and smoke. The pub is filled with laughter, pitchers sloshing, cigarette-smoke signals curling through the atmosphere, through the open door and windows, into the cool summer air. It’s late, they're all drunk, and his friends are all vying for each other's attention. But he's looking at her now. He wonders why no one else is.

 

Her skin prickles when she feels she’s being watched. A few sips tops off her beer and she stands up, shakily, tipsy, gathering her things. There's her thick blue cape, tarnished silver saber, an old knit scarf. The rabbit emblem on her belt glints seductively in the firelight when she stands. A few swift movements and she's out the back, a stranger in the night, while he fumbles to push his chair back and pursue her clicking metal heels. 

 

In the alley she lights up a final cigarette. The night is warm and clear. 

 

He trips out the doorway, over his old leather boots, and finds himself inches away from her pale face and cigarette. Her eyes are a deep honey yellow in the floodlights. 

They stare at each other. 

She raises one cynical eyebrow.

 

 

"Uh..." He's finds he's suddenly speechless. 

"Hello" she snorts. Her lips are a deep red like her scarf. She exhales smoke and licks where the cigarette was. 

“I don't suppose we've met before...?” he asks vaguely, standing, wiping his sweaty hands on his trousers. 

She looks at him. “No." The statement is definitive. Sensing his ruse, she frowns, turning, and takes a final deep drag on her cigarette before throwing it away and moving down the alley toward the distant street-light. 

“I mean - you look - familiar - ” He tries it, a ditch effort thrown in her direction. 

"Yeah, right.” She throws back. Her words linger like smoke from the discarded cigarette. Her clicking heels grow fainter.

Damnit, he thinks. “Wait a sec!"

She doesn't. She hugs her cloak tighter. 

"Just - hold on -"

She still doesn't.  

"Miss - Ok, ok - you're - you're not from here - "

Clearly.

She's moving still farther away. 

" - Alverian! - You're - " 

 

She does stop now. 

"What did you say?"

"You're Alverian, aren't you?" 

 

Her lack of immediate response traces a shiver down his spine. 

The drip drip drip of the gutters carves distance between them, the a rhythmic beating that stretches the moment into physical space. He can hear the scratching of little creatures among the pub garbage. A solitary cricket croons behind the garden gate. He strangely has to resist putting his hands in his pants pockets; a young man standing, shirt askew, in hand-me-down clothes, in the alley behind the town pub. With a strange woman. The silence churns like storm clouds between them.

 

“Says who?” 

She asks, twisting to face him.

"Who says I'm Alverian?"

At the edge of the alley, just within reach of the flood-lights, she is a tiny cobalt statuette with a pin on her hip.

 

"I just know." He replies, subdued. "I've never...seen another around this town.” 

It's all he has the power to say. 

 

"Well, what makes you think I'm Alverian?" She asks again.

 

The she stops, and he can see her look at him, truly, for the first time. His broad shoulders, the thick and always ruddy cheekbones he inherited from his grandfather, the oddly squished nose; it's been broken 3 times, but the shape remains much the same. Out of the blanching effect of the floodlights she might even suspect his funny-colored hair, the deep blue-chestnut that was always called - stereotypical. But at least his manner would be foreign to her. It was an oddly uncomfortable thought. 

He blushed again under her scrutiny. 

 

  She eventually sniffed and let out a loud, inglorious snort. “You forward creature - I didn’t think I’d meet anything like you here.” She laughed out loud, a course gesture, and his skin goosebumped. Her easy curtness scraping his pride. "Who knew I wasn't alone here." But an almost painful smile curled her lower lip, and she grew dark. “Well, there you have it, I suppose."  

Was she sad? He didn't understand that.

She turned on her heel. "Go home, kid. I'm just passing through.”

Sharp, clipped footsteps headed toward the streetlight, faster this time.

 

Wait a second

"No -" 

She would disappear if she left the alley 

“Just -"

How could he get her to stop? 

"You can't leave like this, you dolt!" He blurted out. Ingloriously. 

She laughed at him. 

"In the name of - at least let me buy you coffee!” 

It wasn’t quite what he’d intended. He fumbled.

"Don't leave yet."  

She hovered at the edge of the flood-lights, then turned to face him again for the second time. 

“Buy me coffee?" She giggled. There was an undertow of animal malice, a sardonic cackling edge to her laughter. It took him aback. 

"Yes. Tomorrow. Here, at the pub, midday - no mid-morning! Let me buy you breakfast before you go on your way.” He smiled a slightly too-charming smile. It was far past the time for flirting, and he hadn't intended to do this. But it stuck to his lips regardless. 

There was no laughter this time.  

“Fine." 

It was like an exhale. 

Then she turned on her heel and was gone. 

No goodbye.

He wasn't sure what to make of that. 

 

Around the corner, she gripped her sword hilt hard and grit her teeth.

 

-- 

 

He would realize later how much effort it had taken her to show up the next morning. 

 

He wore his best and only good shirt and vest, greasing his hair and shaving. When she arrived, he was excited and nervous. He saw her approaching from down the street, arriving from among the houses with a quiet grace. He approached, intending to welcome her like a long-lost friend, but her eyes stared him down, and she met him only with coldness. 

 

She was different in the daylight then he had thought, and this unnerved him. The honey-colored eyes he had seen were sallow and cold in the foggy morning light. He stepped back from them, yet they followed his movements uncomfortably, and she - the girl - made no apologied for it. She was much smaller than he'd remember her, her body small and frail-looking beneath all her fabric; a thin, blanched, thing with skin as pale and sallow as painter's canvas. He was balanced and poised, but as an animal, wary of it's prey. She did not speak to him, and her eyes stared him down; it was immediately clear she would uphold no pretense for him that she was different then she was. She approached him in front of the pub irreverently, didn't say a word, and let herself inside without acknowledgement and without fanfare. 

 

But, he refused to be pushed away. Watching her as she glided a few paces in front of him, he searched her movements for some sign she was who he had met the night before. Yes, she was the Alverian; yes, she was still the graceful creature he had been drawn to, albeit far colder then he had remember. It calmed him considerably, and set his mind on the task at hand. 

 

They sat together awkwardly, at a table in the middle of the pub, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Beyond looking out of place, her overall discomfort was palpable and made him even more uncomfortable in return. He tucked it into the back of his mind.

The more he was with her, the less he understood her. 

No, he had never met another creature like her before. 

 

"Thank you for seeing me...uh, this morning." 

The formality felt strange, insincere. He changed tack.

 "I mean, I'm glad you could make it - "

"You invited me here. I came."

"Food is hard to refuse, right?"

She looked incredulous. He sat stiffly in his chair. The stared at each other. 

"Yes, I am here." She broke the silence. "As you requested."

"Thank you." 

"I am not quite what you expected." She said, pointedly, perhaps a little self-consciously. "I likely won't be."

Another silence. 

"Truthfully, I couldn't begin to imagine what to expect." He rolled this thought around in his mind for a moment. "I've never met another...like you before."

"Like you, you mean." 

He inhaled sharply and met her eyes. Understanding passed through her, then, electric, between them.

 

"You...must have travelled quite a distance to get here."

There was another silence, easier this time. 

"Yes."

"I - can't even begin to imagine the adventures you must have been through -"

Her look stopped him. 

"Adventures..." she began slowly, then stopped again. "Are a funny thing to call them, in the end." Her eyes drifted away from him, out the window. Morning light fell into them like illuminated glass. 

"Well," He drew her back, "Wherever you've been, it's the least I can do to buy you coffee."

"That's a joke." She smiled for the first time. "Welcome, though." 

He nodded. 

 

They began talking about little things. The weather here, the layout of the town. They eased into the conversation like fish in water, and she thumbed the handle of her saber absentmindedly. He watched her hands. 

He liked them. They were thin and rough.

"Your sword. Don't you want to put it down?"

"No." 

One word responses were her forte. 

"Why not?"

She didn't answer. Another look away.  

Well she was a hard nut to crack. 

 

"I'm curious," he probed again after a while, "How did you get here? Truly?" 

As was becoming her custom, her eyes stayed away from his, looking out the window. 

"You're the first I've seen in a long time, kid." It was an admission. She looked tired.

His heart reached out to her. 

"How long have you been traveling?"

Her right hand rested on the table. He almost reached out to touch it. 

She snorted, paused. A history passed over her face, then her lips distorted and she sneered in distaste. "Long." The hand on the table clenched then absentmindedly reached for her hip again. She stroked the saber like a wounded child seeking comfort. "Some things are better left unspoken."

He let her words hang in the air, and let himself feel cowed.

There was no way could he understand this woman over the course of a breakfast.  

 

"It's so...curious...to have meet you." He admit, letting the words out slowly. He twisted his hands, "You're the first one I've actually...met."

She didn't respond in the way he'd hoped. 

"We've all but died out." 

His thinking drifted into dark places.

"And you? How did you get here?"

Her question reeled him back. 

"My parents were immigrants. I was a baby when they arrived.” He ruffled in his dirty pants pocket, placing an old photograph on the table.

 

     It was then the waitress appeared, and he ordered them two coffees while the girl studied the picture. 

“I don’t know them.” She told him, as if he'd expected her to. 

“They’re dead.” He replied, and took it from her, studying it himself for a half-second before stuffing it back in his pocket. “Dead of Black Death." 

 

When he looked back up, she was rigid again, crouched against her seat in the chair, as if a ghost had taken over her. Her eyes, glassy, stared out the window once again. He thought perhaps she had seen something, and followed her gaze, but there was nothing.

Silence followed. 

As he watched her the thought occurred to him he was more like a wounded animal than anyone he had ever met before. 

The idea made his heart race, then ache. 

 

“Why did you invite me for breakfast?” she asked abruptly.

“I want to know who you are, stranger like me.”

“There's really no one else like you here?” 

There was a twinge of vulnerability and regret in her question. 

 

The waitress again approached and put their 2 coffees down between them on the table. The girl took hers delicately and moved it to her side of the table, dumping three packets of sugar and 2 drops of whole milk into her mug. They sat stirring and sipping in silence.

 

 

“My name is Balgees.” He said out of the blue.

She smiled. “Balgees…” She rolled it around on her tongue. "Lovely. Id imagine it makes you unusual around here.”

"Not the only thing unusual about me." He played. "Call me Bal for short, or - Bally, sometimes. It gets confused with ‘Balthazar’ which is more common. That helps.”

 

She stirred her coffee. 

He wanted her to look up. To look at him. 

He realized he wanted to know her. 

“And you?” He asked, trying to interpret her response. “Who are you?” He meant to ask, ‘what’s your name?’ but it came out wrong.

She blanched, then darkened, and it looked like she didn’t want to answer.

He waited.

A blush dusted her cheeks, and for a moment she looked more like a girl and less like a starved wolf. 

“Marrow.”

She said it slowly, and shot him a look full of meaning. He didn’t understand it at all.

 

They left the Tavern by midmorning. He sauntered out with his hands in his pockets, and she stayed, reserved, cool behind him but no longer cold. The faced each other in the light of the day, and he smiled at her, extending his hand for a handshake. She, hesitantly, as seemed to be her new way with him, took it.

 “It was...really, a pleasure to meet you.” He said.

She nodded.

"And you." 

"Where will you go now?" 

She didn't answer. 

 

The sunlight was warm on their necks. In front of the pub, they were just a pair of shadows, while passers-by on the street ignored them, absorbed in their own lives. A bunch of young boys were shouting and throwing stones at a stray cat. 

 

She wasn't going to answer his question. 

She looked so small in the daylight. The broad shoulders were there - the same ones he had - her rough and tousled blue-chestnut hair hung in short swaths on her forehead. She had similar features to his, and yet - this girl was so different. And yet - the sword at her hip seemed less threatening now. Her being, pale and thin, looked fragile. And yet - she was so firm in front of him, a small, singular thing used to surviving singularly. That was her way. 

Yes, alone. That was her way. 

 

"Until we meet again." He continued, in the typical custom of his place. 

“To heaven.” She agreed, replying in the typical custom of hers. 

 

Their hands met and pressed together for a few moments. 

“Well then...” She said. Yet he continued to hold her hand, not letting go. She let him.

Something was different, but they couldn't tell what. 

Eventually, their hands separated. 

 

“If you’re ever through here again, please look me up.” She nodded and didn’t smile. She was back to the chilly thing she's started out to be. 

 

In departing, she just turned on her heel. He waited, watching her go, then waved at her back. He memorized it, already etching her face and features into his mind.  Eventually, he himself turned and headed back home.

 

She was someone he didn't want to forget.