Tabitha had always run a tight ship.
She’d always kept within her budget, had never needed to take out a loan, and had made a tidy little niche for herself within the community. Even the dark turns that the Cliff District sometimes took couldn’t keep her down. Everyone needed a distraction now and then, no matter how desperate—and that was why her knick knacks had always sold. Magical objects and mundane alike.
It was near closing time, half past seven in the evening. Summer. Still, the streets never got the warm rays that the tops of the buildings did—most of them seventy stories up. It was always cold on the street. But sometimes, during the summer—like right now—there was a warm breeze.
As she opened one of the windows, to let the breeze in, the chime hanging above the main door let out a merry song.
“Hi, Tab,” murmured a familiar voice. It always made her heart stop, briefly, every time she heard it. Like some sort of big, shadowy thing was walking in to—
“Tab?”
“I’m sorry.” She turned around. “I’m swarmed with my thoughts, this evening. How are you, Eri?”
Eri—and she’d always just gone by Eri—was standing there, half admiring her display of magical kaleidoscopes and half eyeing her. A human, or so she looked. But Tabitha knew better. No human lived as long as Eri had lived. She’d met Eri when she’d been a little girl, hanging on her father’s pant leg as he’d stocked the store—back when it had been his. Now Tabitha was an old woman with two grandchildren, and Eri still looked the same.
Always pale, her black hair at shoulder-length and a scar down her face—over her right eye. Her eyes that were as red as a sunset.
“I’m… the same as I always am,” Eri murmured. “Always.”
Tabitha sighed, sitting down in the old rocking chair by the front desk. It creaked as she sank into it. “You’re in one of your melancholy moods, I see.”
Eri pawed her facial scar with a long, pale hand, sighing. “It’s been a long week.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“That’s kind,” she chuckled, “but you don’t want to hear about it. Trust me.”
She shrugged, gesturing to an old, ratty armchair that her father had once favored. “Sit down. Stay a while.”
Eri sat down in the way an alert cat does, her posture still crouched as though she were waiting to spring up and run. She took off her leather belts first—belts that hooked around her. She always had a rod of iron attached to them. Tabitha never asked what it was for—she didn’t want to know.
“Do you still dream the same thing?” Tabitha asked gently.
For a moment, she was sure she wasn’t going to get an answer. And then Eri’s red eyes opened, staring at her with raw exhaustion.
“Yes. Every night. I still see his face.”
“There wasn’t anything you could do. You made his last moments more bearable. You defended him. No one else did.”
“That’s not much comfort,” Eri grumbled.
Tabitha nodded. “I know. But it’s all you have. …it’s all any of us have, Raven willing.”
Eri sighed deeply. “How’s the shop been?” she asked, very pointedly changing the subject.
“The shop’s still here. It’ll be here for a while. My daughter’s going to take over, when I’m too old to bend over or climb the stocking ladders.” She smiled. “You remember Jui, right?”
“The little ratty one who used to ask me question after question? How could I forget?”
“She has two daughters of her own now, Morsi and Calith. Cute little things.”
Eri looked far away for a moment, as though she were trying to remember something. Tabitha didn’t disturb her. The woman had a memory in shambles—barely able to keep anything straight, as though her mind was cluttered beyond help. Still, something about her had made Tabitha’s father latch onto the woman like a pet project—even though something about her had always been… off.
“Will you still come here?” she asked softly. “When Jui runs the shop?”
Her red eyes focused again. “Would you like me to?”
“Yes. I don’t think the shop would be right without you visiting every once in a while,” Tabitha murmured fondly. “I think it likes you just as much as we do.”
Eri smiled, rubbing at her face again. “Your family’s always been very kind to me, Tab. And I appreciate it.”
“I haven’t forgotten how much you helped us, Eri.”
Her father had run into hard times, and her husband had died from disease. Jui had been little, only eight, when the gnoll and the goatfolk had taken her away—Tabitha screaming and trying to stop them. It was to motivate her father to pay his debts, they said, but her father had no way of doing so. Jui was lost.
Eri had heard them. She’d listened to the story and then, squeezing Tabitha briefly on the shoulder, had left. A week went by, and then Eri had returned—with a squirming Jui. Tabitha hadn’t asked too many questions. She’d just been grateful.
“I didn’t do much,” Eri said, with a shrug.
“You did enough.”
Eri stood up, the dusky light making her face look more grey than white. “I should be off again. Before nighttime. You don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“Things still find you in the night?”
“Always,” she murmured, shrugging again. “I’m used to it now.”
Tabitha stood up—it took her longer—and crossed the room to give the taller woman a hug. “Take care of yourself, and come see me again. Sooner this time.”
“Yes, mother,” Eri chuckled teasingly.
“I wouldn’t want to be your mother. You’d scare me to death.” Tabitha patted her arm with a smile. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Like a shadow filtering away from light, Eri was soon gone. Her steps padded near-silently down the street. Passers-by gave her a wide berth, as though they could sense the rather unique nature of her existence.
Tabitha closed the shop door, shivering.
How could one creature be so right, and yet so wrong?
(Source: velvetdemon.net)
