[Tai]
He turned his attention to the doorway, seeing the bonfires one by one be lighted. Except for the fire in the center of town, none of the other fires could be appropriately called bonfire's despite their flames reaching higher than the average run of the mill campfire. He walked over to the doorway with a faint smile and laughed as he muttered coldly to himself, "This is what hell would look like if it existed..." His voice echoed off the bookshelves, his gentle tenor matching the sweet scent of candied apples in both sweetness and in the memories it would invoke in any mortal. He shook his head turning from the door and walked over to his boss' desk and grinned seeing the trap door closed. His boss was avoiding the festival too, and though he wanted company he knew better than to bother the old man when the door was closed. is boss' home was built on top of the bookshop but he spent most of his time in the basement working on one project or another.
"So that's where you've been hiding Tai." spoke a quiet, but forceful voice from behind him. He turned coming face to face with his worst nightmare, the one woman insane enough in the whole village to consider marrying him.
"Ah, Ailley...I was not expecting you to be stopping by today. It is my day off so there shall be no stories for you here." The girl clearly missed the curtness of his tone as he looked her over. AIlley had always been on the fringe, one of the people who managed to fit in with all the strange customs of the village, but strove for the individuality that was viewed as a disease. Tai was the disease according to the thought of most of the community, an infectious disease that their customs would not permit them to extricate.
That was the only reason Tai could figures as an explanation for why the beautiful firl in fron to f him took an interest in the bookkeeper's apprentice. He was the one who could infect her with the individuality necessary to set her soul free. He always refused her advances though. Never once did he toy with the thought she might be happy with her soul flying free and who would really want to marry such a flighty girl who was a bird finally out of her cage to fly far away from everything, including him. He had not been happy and he had gone away, he had been free of this village, and had not once in his life happy. If he was a disease this village was a poison of shame from the mother's womb to the finish line.
Despite the poison and the disease running through her system, Ailley likely the most attractive young woman in the whole village. She looked soft and gentle, her facial features round and curving so perfectly that Tai found it near impossible to resist the thought of holding her in his arms. He knew better. She had opted for the life of a seamstress working from her parent's house rather than a farm girl which allowed her fingers a delicate and nimble quality, and she gained her fair complexion from rarely being in the sun. Her waist length dark brown hair was curled and wavy and, from what Tai could figure, completely unmanageable adding a wild flair to the girl. Her eyes though are what stopped men in their tracks tracks. Their dark hazel quality rivaled the beauty of any wise, old tree. The girl could have been born of nature itself and Tai would have believed it without a second thought. "Is it so wrong to com and see my favorite storyteller?" she asked cutting through his thoughts with a firm, bitter tone.
Tai smiled faintly and answered "Ailley I was just..."
"Assuming things that are not true. Honestly Tai, and you call yourself civilized."
She went over to the bookshelves and smiled running her fingers over the spines of the various sized books. Tai supposed she could be trying to read, but this village all to happily blinded its people allowing outcasts to learn to do all the reading for everyone else.
 Evelie Harte · Sat Jun 13, 2009 @ 07:23pm · 0 Comments |
