Chapter 149: Day 148

Day 148,

Morning thought: Despite outward appearance of correlation it’s not that the constant rain depresses me - if anything I enjoy and feel energized by it when I allow myself to indulge - it’s that when combined with the daily routine obligations of teaching (again, something in and of itself I’m coming more to like as time goes on) I find it difficult to engage in other pursuits that might distract me from dwelling on existential matters.  

 

Back at the house waiting for hanging laundry to dry and watching out in case the rain returns to force me to bring it all inside early.  Still not sure if I’ll be trying to make a late-evening-possibly-nighttime walk back to the Village or try to wake early in the morning to hurry to the library before the children arrive.  Maiko was out when I arrived and hasn’t returned.  Not sure where.  I could use the bracelet to get an idea of direction and guess, but that feels like an invasion of privacy so I’ll leave well enough alone.  

Last night went well enough, all things considered.  Okay, that’s kind of a lie.  Honestly, I felt awkward and uncomfortable most of the night, but I did my best to try and hide it.

The Village has a single inn, primarily used by residents of the outskirts with no family in town on market days or caught visiting on a mist night.  In addition to the expected sleeping rooms and common room/restaurant there’s a side room for private parties.  It was outside this building that I (tardily) met up with Cass and inside this room were I was to perform for the basket weaver and the man she introduced to us as her boyfriend, a tanner from the outskirts.

And thus the first bit of awkwardness, playing the role of a night at the movies (I’m surprised I could even write that word, or rather that this language has a word for it; less surprised about the splitting headache I get trying to focus on it and break down the etymology) for a young couple on a date.  I’d like to say this is the part where I seized the serendipitous opportunity, steeled myself, and launched into the coincidentally appropriate romance of The Merchant and The Blacksmith’s Daughter.  Alas, I am no hero following dramatically appropriate beats for character growth.

Instead, although still mentally off-balance from my earlier conversation with Pat (I acted like a brat, I should give him a more proper apology the next time I see him; also, still didn’t get around to asking things I wanted to ask) I went along with my original plan for the evening.  I asked the couple if they had requests, got an answer of general mood rather than specific title, and pulled Cass aside to discuss the second part of my plan.  The second part of the plan (which I would have briefed her on sooner had I not run later) being to tell the story jointly, giving her practice as an apprentice with telling for an audience.  This of course necessitated that we choose a story we both knew well that also fit the needs of our patrons for the night.  That narrowed our options and we wound up settling on one that was admittedly a stretch to fit the theme.

Still, we apologized for the wait, got started, and made do.  I took the lead and for any scenes of multiple characters interacting, Cass would take on describing the actions and saying the quotes for one particular character.  (I use the word “quotes” rather than “lines” or “dialogue” as convention with these tellings is to describe the flow and content of conversations rather than recreating them, stepping into direct quotation only for the most dramatically or comedically significant portions.  I suspect this is to keep the traditional single teller from needing to carry on a conversation with themselves.)  On the up side, I think the novelty of having two tellers working in concert made up for the story itself perhaps not being romantic enough to fit the desired mood for the evening.  On the down side, between still being frazzled from earlier and instinctively feeling like an intrusive third wheel in the presence of a couple trying to have a nice night together even though I was supposed to be the live entertainment for them I found myself fobbing greater and greater portions of the telling off on Cass.  Enough that it eventually clicked for me that she was getting uncomfortable with the responsibility and I had to snatch back the metaphorical reins.

Still, we got through, and if the basket weaver and the tanner didn’t request an encore, I don’t think it was because they were displeased.  Once out of the private room I apologized to Cass for what happened.  She acted as if she didn’t know what I was talking about and that it hadn’t been anywhere near too much to handle.  I hope she didn’t pick that habit up from me.

Now, as I mentioned, there was a common room to the inn, and this was a market day (well, night at that point).  The gathered outskirts dwellers had noted my arrival (whether they recognized me from the equinox festival or the pendant I still wore) and asked if I was there to perform for them.  On the way in I told them that as appealing as it sounded I had another commitment for the evening.  On the way out they repeated their request.  Spurred by a frustrated desire to do something right that day, I told them that if dinner were provided first for my apprentice and I, I gladly would.  My terms were heartily accepted.  Drinks were offered as well, but when it comes to anything professional I like to think I have some standards.  And besides, in that moment, I desired neither help nor “help”.

Once my plate was cleared I took the… well not so much “stage” as “spot where tables had been pushed aside to make a ring.”  In a mood to match the hour and the weather I warned the audience that this night’s tales would be ones not of adventure and daring, but of fear and those things that lurk in the dark.  They laughed and took it as a challenge.  Good.  If I failed to frighten, they would be able to boast of their courage, and if I succeeded… well, they say there’s a kind of catharsis in horror fiction.

But what stories to tell those for whom shades and nature sprites were facts of life (albeit the former seemingly far more so than the latter)?  I settled for those that had once kept me up at night and jumping at shadows (or so my own visceral reactions at their recollection seemed to indicate).  The hunter who ate the tail of a strange beast that returned in the night to retrieve it.  A grand house in which darkness itself ate flesh and the stubborn man who chose to blind himself with lights rather than leave.  A monster that leaves strange amenities in the hallways of inns and preys upon those who make use of them.  Among others.

During a break in the storm outside following the completion of the second such tale of the night, Cass informed me that she was heading back to Norman and Marva’s.  I said that I would come with her to see her safely back, but she insisted that I stay at the inn and keep going.  In another life it would have been unthinkable for me to accept that, but there is no danger on the streets of the Village, save for the shades, even on a dark and stormy night.

As I indicated in last night’s final entry, I carried on like this later than I ought to have.  In retrospect, it’s unclear quite how much of the innkeeper’s covering of the common room’s crystals was to help set the mood, and how much was subtly hinting that it was closing time and we all ought to head to bed.

Did my stories frighten anyone?  Hard to say.  By the end, I myself was half-delirious from an adrenal high from getting too into the telling colliding with a strained body’s internal cries for rest and background anger at the day’s earlier perceived failures, so I wasn’t in much of a state to gauge others.

The innkeeper offered me a room for the night to save me the walk back to the library at such an hour.  I should have accepted, but I was too worked up into an obstinate state of proving to myself that I could do things for anything other than staggering through the night over rain-slicked streets back to the archives under my own power to be permissible.  Utterly foolish, but at least the rain had stopped for the night in truth by that point.

Having written that down, maybe I really shouldn’t force unnecessary nighttime journeys on myself two nights in a row.  Besides, maybe Maiko will show up before I leave in the morning.  I wouldn’t mind the company.

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