To celebrate, I'm going to pass on a tradition that my friends and I started a little over a year ago. About once or twice a week, we would pass on to each other in a mass email a "Moment of Ridiculousness," any sort of funny, entertaining or witty tid-bit that crossed our path. For your first moment of ridiculousness, I am pleased to present to you one of my favorite youtube clips: "Simon's Cat." I've been following these videos from the start and I hope that you will find them to be as entertaining as I.
Now that you've (hopefully) had a good laugh, onto the show! Last week, we left Providence at the start of an awful mess! Ms. Grace was being blackmailed into a contract to save her school and chaos erupted on the edge of the forest. Let's see what next will happen in our favorite little town...
The Tale of the Tamrins
Chapter 12: The
Waters of Greenbrook
The bangs, pops, and the
zipping whistles behind Ms. Grace faded to mere whispers lost in the wind. The
words of Mrs. Higley were among those left behind. Ms. Grace ran deep into
Homewood Forest, her place of refuge as a child. Her thoughts ran blank. All
she could hear was the crunches her boots made as they pounded the leaf
blanketed forest floor. Her breaths were heavy and her side hurt something
dreadful, but her head told her to continue forth. In her heart Ms. Grace knew
that it was impossible to outrun her problems, but the feeling of the breeze
against her burning face felt so good, so right. She knew that it was silly,
but she did something she used to do when she was a child – she imagined that
she had taken flight. She always wondered how freeing it would be to spread
one’s wings to rise above. Surely no one would be able to stop her or ground
her and their words, their gossip would mean nothing. The offending sounds
would be mute to her in the clouds.
But even the best dreams
must come to an end.
Ms. Grace’s run became a
slow and drained walk. Exhausted, sweaty and warm she halted beside the
Greenbrook stream. The waters trickled by the human who breathed heavily and
held her hands tightly to her hips. Ms. Grace’s throat was achingly dry and
those waters looked wonderfully inviting. She wished the water was deeper than
her ankles so that she could take a dip, but because it was not, she instead
settled by the water’s side. Ms. Grace pulled her skirt up above her knees so
to kneel beside the water without dirtying anything more than her white bloomers.
The cool moist ground did
well to bring down her body’s temperature. The wet soil slowly soaked into her
clothes between the ground and her shins, but she did not mind. The cool ground
was refreshing. Her chest was still rising and falling heavily and her heart
was settling back to normalcy. Licking her dry lips Ms. Grace leaned forward
and looked at her reflection in the steadily flowing waters. In the rippled
reflection she blurrily saw that her cheeks were bright red. She wondered how
much of their hues were owed to the running and how much to the slap. Her cheek
did not hurt any more, but her face felt uncomfortably warm. Ms. Grace reached
her hands into the cold waters. The back of her fingers rubbed against the
smooth, dark pebbles that lay atop the golden silt. She held her hands in the
water for a moment, letting the cold stream’s touch pass over her skin. She
briefly remembered how she and her friends would collect those stones to
imagine what magical properties they potentially possessed.
Ms. Grace smiled.
She pulled out from the
stream her hands’ worth of water. She dunked her face into her hands, which
were tingling from the cold. The waters took to cooling so quickly here. The
water against her face rejuvenated her with its crisp bite. Ms. Grace repeated
the cleansing two more times before wiping the excess droplets from her face
with one hand. Sighing, she wiped the waters from her eyes.
At first she thought that
her vision was blurred from the waters, but after blinking hard the sight she
saw was confirmed. Not twenty feet away were the reverend’s cousins walking toward
her. Ms. Grace knew that it was not proper for her to remain on the ground in
such a state, but she was too exhausted to stand.
“Is all well, Ms. Grace?” Lin
inquired as she and Howard arrived at the other side of the stream in front of
Ms. Grace.
Unlooping his arm from Lin’s,
Howard further asked from the woman still dripping slightly, “We heard our
fireworks,” his question was halted when Lin’s elbow struck his side. The
concern was that the technology developed by vampires to manipulate black powder
into dazzling lights could be abused if it fell into the wrong hands. Even
among friends like Ms. Grace, caution was necessary. “D-uh, I mean we heard the
commotion, which we assumed came from the
firesticks.” Howard sent a look for approval from Lin who smiled awkwardly
before he continued: “Is everyone alright?”
Ms. Grace wiped the bridge
of her round-ended nose from the remaining water and she scoffed angrily at
herself. “I don’t know. Forgive me, I ran out of there so quickly for other
reasons. I,” Ms. Grace pushed her palms against her eyes to keep herself from
crying. She could not continue speaking.
It was clear that the child
was deeply distressed. The matron and the patron exchanged a look and tacitly
assigned each other a duty. Howard cleared his throat and gently said, “I will
go check on how things are in town. Do not fret, Ms. Grace, I am certain that
all is well.” He nodded his head to her respectfully then crossed the brook,
stirring the golden silt to run downstream with the moderate flow. Ms. Grace’s
eyes followed the glimmering sparkles in the tide while Howard disappeared at a
hastened step behind her. Lin too crossed the brook so that she could more
personally discern what troubled the woman who meant so much to their reverend.
Like Ms. Grace, Lin pulled her long, simple skirt up to her knees to settle
beside the stream’s bed. Ms. Grace seemed so distant. Her eyes were unfocused
on the amber colored canopy of trees.
“Ms. Grace?” Lin sweetly
called, placing a reassuring hand on the school teacher’s shoulder. The matron
knew that Ms. Grace typically held the composure worthy of gentry, so it pained
her to see the child so lost. Lin hoped that she would be able to gird the girl
back to her lively and bright countenance that the reverend spoke of so
frequently. “Is everything alright, my dear little school teacher?”
The nomenclature produced a
smile and a chuckle from Ms. Grace. She looked to Lin’s black and blue colored
eyes and said, “So, graduated from ‘dear little tree-climber’, have I?” Her
query referenced the name by which Lin would address her when they first met
years ago in this forest. “It’s just like I’m a child again, isn’t it?” she
asked with a snuffle. “The reason for me being here certainly tastes the same.”
“Is it Mrs. Huff again?” Lin
asked, she pushed a wet chunk of Ms. Grace’s hair out from her face.
“Surprisingly not,” Ms.
Grace said, chuckling ironically. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket in
her belt to wipe her face. As she padded the cloth around her eyes she
elaborated to Lin: “Due to a financial disaster my school may be shut down
because it is too expensive to maintain. I-I should have seen this coming. The
schoolhouse has had an awful leak in its roof since bloody May and I have
requested it to be fixed over and over again, but nothing. Now, I understand
why.” Ms. Grace ran the red handkerchief along her moist hair line as she began
to babble, “There’s no money to fix it. I mean, I figured that there were more
pressing matters backing the papers up on the mayor’s desk so I never bothered
to press the issue. Nor have I even mentioned the three leaks in my own house’s ceiling, I’ve dealt with that as best
I can. I can’t afford to fix it right now.”
“That is something that should
be addressed before winter arrives, Ms. Grace,” Lin advised, continuing to hold
her hand atop Ms. Grace’s shoulder.
“No, my house will be fine,”
Ms. Grace assured. “I’m by far more concerned about the school.” She sighed
then proceeded to tell Lin all about the row between herself and Mrs. Higley.
The matron’s heart sank as
she sat still and listened to the duration of Ms. Grace’s problem. To hear that
a man other than the reverend asked for Ms. Grace’s hand was like a silver
blade to her heart. This was the worst news. It was only the other day that the
reverend announced to Lin and Howard that he had every intention to ask Ms.
Grace to marry him on Friday night.
Lin never before more
regretted the rules of her clan, which bound her and the others from
interfering in the lives of mortals for better or for worst. The matron hated
herself at this moment for signing the documentation that marked the intentions
of the vampires to remain distanced for the sake of their time-bound friends. Lin
looked away from Ms. Grace. She felt sick. She could not imagine the heartbreak
of the reverend if Ms. Grace were to accept Mrs. Higley’s damned ultimatum. The
vampire knew that aritoirs like her reverend were not too different from
wizards in that they only fell once and that it lasted for life. If Ms. Grace
became promised to another, surely the reverend would never again be the same.
“I don’t know what to do,”
Ms. Grace quietly said. She too felt sick. “To marry Brian Higley is one of the
last things I could ever wish, but losing my school is the first. Those
children would have no one else to instruct them; aside from my friend Allison,
Mr. Tamrin and Mrs. Elderbe I am the only one who has ever left this county. We
are the only few who have seen that there is more to the world than Providence.
Nuir Nosnobles is beautiful, but most of our town’s people will never see any
of it beyond Homewood or Eastwick. The children will never be instructed of the
lives that potentially could be there’s if I can’t instruct them. I guess I
could use dirt and sticks to teach the children, but I think that’d get old
after while.” The teacher attempted at a light nervous joke to make her-self
feel a little better, but it was not working. She felt awful because what she
really wanted more than anything was to be Mrs. Thane Tamrin, but that wish,
that dream was fading. “What should I do?” she asked, fighting the urge to cry.
“I feel like such a hypocrite; I just told a student, two of my students
actually, that they should do whatever it takes to protect the whims of their
heart and here I am contemplating selling my soul for the sake of only a piece
of my heart.”
Lin swallowed hard and
asked, “Where is the rest of your heart Ms. Grace?” she was hoping that the
teacher would confess to loving Thane, for then Lin would have viable reason to
intervene, but she needed to hear the words from Ms. Grace in order to have
semi-official release from the contract.
But Ms. Grace was far too
discrete to admit that the reverend’s name and face were gilded on her heart.
“I don’t know,” she lied. She shook her head and crumbled.
Lin felt so useless. There
was nothing she could do at this time. She would not even be able to tell Thane
of her involvement in this conversation. Vampires were meant to exist only as
shadows in the lives of humans. As it was, the reverend’s intimate knowledge of
their underground world would be considered heinous to other clans outside of
the Cärabadés, so aiding Ms. Grace now would be sacrilegious to their widely
held creeds. She did not want to let this matter go without intervention, but
for now that was the matron’s only option. Lin rubbed Ms. Grace’s shoulder and
pulled her into a tight embrace. “The world is cruel sometimes, Ms. Grace,” Lin
whispered as she held the child like she were her own daughter. “More often
than not our hearts are forced to endure great pain that we must fight to
strive through. But all that matters, Ms. Grace, what it really comes down to
are those quiet moments at the end of the day when we are forced to be alone
with our own devices. It is during that time when we must decide if the choices
we have made allow us to look at ourselves shamelessly in the eye.” Lin gently
pushed Ms. Grace to arms distance. She held onto the
little-tree-climber-teacher that she had saved once before contrary to the
rules of her breed, but with the approval of her clan. Lin knew that even as
the matron of the clan a second favorable vote to help the same mortal was
highly unlikely. Her position as matron did not carry much weight with matters
regarding intervention with mortals; if she dared to act alone it would result
with her exile from all vampire clans. An eternity alone was not something she
could imagine enduring, but she knew that she could at least do her best to
help Ms. Grace and Thane through the power of suggestion. With a guilt ridden
sigh, Lin continued, “So, Ms. Grace, if you marry Mr. Higley instead of another under the circumstances could
you, without tears or remorse, shame or hate, look at your beautiful eyes in
the dark and lonely hours of the night?”
Ms. Grace felt small in the
stare of Lin’s eyes. There was something so other worldly about this woman –
she figured without a doubt in her heart that this woman was what she
suspected, but that matter was not important at the moment. And even though Ms.
Grace’s vision was mildly blurry, she could see that there was something else
in Lin’s eyes: a message she knew forward and back. Ms. Grace was a little
surprised to see it glowing so promptly from another, but there was nothing
that could be done to appease its suggestive call. Ms. Grace swallowed her
fears and pushed the reverend’s face from her heart. “No, I couldn’t and I
think you know why,” Ms. Grace answered Lin’s inquiry truthfully. “But, for the
sake of those children who will not
have the chance to learn of anything other than Providence without me, I will
feign a smile and a sparkle from my eye so long as I live. It’s only one
lifetime after all.” Ms. Grace stood from the ground with stiff and unsteady
legs.
Lin too stood in one smooth
motion. Her senses told her that Ms. Grace was more than aware of the
reverend’s feelings for her. Lin did not yet know that the pair admitted their
attraction to one another.
Ms. Grace dusted off her
dress. With her head held proudly, she said, “If dreams may become reality with
the strength and will of our head and heart, why then may we not do the reverse
and return the realities to dreams?” Ms. Grace inhaled quickly and shakily. She
never wanted to forget the love in her reverend’s words, his touch and his kiss,
but forcing the scene to become as a dream helped her to do the unthinkable. “I
am going to marry Mr. Higley,” Ms. Grace came to her decision. The words tasted
like poison on her tongue. “What other choice do I have?”
Lin wanted to scream the
reverend’s name, but she knew that it would be for naught. She saw the
resoluteness in Ms. Grace’s eyes, and the sorrow. Only Thane could convince her
otherwise now.
“Come on, Ms. Grace, my
little school teacher,” Lin said as she wrapped a supporting arm around Ms.
Grace’s back. As Ms. Grace did the same to Lin, the two turned to walk back to
Providence. In her hundreds of years on this earth she had never seen humans as
selfless as the reverend and Ms. Grace. She knew that these two souls were
undoubtedly made for each other, but for the time being there was nothing that
she could do for either of them. It was another one of those dark sides of
immortality.
~*~*~
Don't forget to come back next week to see what happens next!
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
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