Month: October 2017

I am unseen. My footsteps are as silk on snow.

I weave, unnoticed, through the throng of swaying patrons. Their already inferior senses are dulled more so by the cheap mead that flows as freshet come Spring.

I am unseen.

Tarted maidens smile and twirl, dodging jutting elbows and wildly swinging extremeties to deliver draught after draught.

Decades have passed, but I remain as sharp as ever.

I perch at the end of the bar and nudge a full tankard off the side. It crashes to the floor, spilling its contents. Its former owner drunkenly apologises profusely to nobody in particular.

I am unseen. I am Kelothur. I am Spymaster to the King of Thornjord, rival to the King of Arven.

Ava stops before me and puts her hand on my neck. Her fingers move quickly behind my ear and my back arches involuntarily. ‘You’re a good kitty’ she whispers and kisses my head. I like Ava.

I lick my paw as I watch her work. They reach for her and she flits away. Pigs all and amidst them, Ava. Dear Ava. She will be the last to die when I escape this infuriating malediction and begin to systematically dismantle Arven from the inside, out…

She essentially had one job. Two, to be picky about it.

One:  Shelve the books.
Two:  Ignore the ‘customers’.

That’s as complex as it should ever have been.

That’s as complex as it had been for nearly twelve years.

Yet for the first time ever in those nearly twelve years, she faltered on the second task. She glanced, when she should have focused more intently on sliding THO in beside THU. She closed her eyes and cursed inwardly at herself.

Of all the days.

Now she stands in the burnt ruins of a once beautiful library.

Smouldering curtains cling pointlessly to their twisted railings. Embers dance and glow on padauk tabletops and mahogany shelves. Shreds of parchment lie scattered and tiny specks of once valuable pages begin to settle like snowflakes around her.