Puck Conolly (
scorpiobird) wrote2016-07-06 11:20 pm
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[Practice Thread]
It costs a lot of money to maintain a horse in Darrow, more than I expected. I thought it was hard on Thisby but at least no one was charging us on her lean-to. The money that comes each month isn't enough to pay for my apartment and Dove's stall at Villa Cordova. That's without her food, the costs of her veterinary care, or the new shoes the farrier put on her. No one cares here that she's the first normal horse to win the Scorpio Races.
People talk of things arriving from home sometimes and in the back of my mind, I can think of any number of things that I'd like to see arrive but the Races' purse is most prominent in my thoughts.
Until then, I work. I've sold some painted plates and teapots at the cat cafe but not enough. Computers, mysterious as they are to me, seem a requirement to getting real paid work around here, so I'm bound for the library with mine in my bag. Hopefully someplace quiet will help.
People talk of things arriving from home sometimes and in the back of my mind, I can think of any number of things that I'd like to see arrive but the Races' purse is most prominent in my thoughts.
Until then, I work. I've sold some painted plates and teapots at the cat cafe but not enough. Computers, mysterious as they are to me, seem a requirement to getting real paid work around here, so I'm bound for the library with mine in my bag. Hopefully someplace quiet will help.
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To see her in Darrow is to wonder how I never noticed her on Thisby for all those years, with such fewer people, and with her hair, red in a different way than Corr is, but bright. Today, we're not particularly crossing paths, but I see her, and I've time enough to divert my path. After all, there's no Benjamin Malvern to stare down his bulbous nose at me here in Darrow. I'm owned by no man's time but my own.
I fall into stride with her, and say nothing at all.
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But it's July and the sun is hotter over us than I've ever felt it on Thisby, even on the days the clouds could be moved to give it some time. To see Sean Kendrick in any weather but cold is as strange as rain on a sunny day. It can't be explained and it doesn't look right, though it has its beauty too.
I don't need to say anything to him but I do reach out so I can slot my first two fingers around his.
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"The weather. Doesn't it rain here?"
Which only reminds me of George Holly, standing in his white shoes in the capaill uisce round pen in the cliff, asking if Thisby was ever not raining.
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It's one thing to love Sean Kendrick but it's another to know how to be his, or anyone's, sweetheart.
And now we're talking about the weather. On Thisby, it isn't a topic of conversation so much as a subject of complaint and often deservedly so. Here, it's an unfortunate mystery.
"Sunny days and a safe beach. I don't think I know how to function in this place," I say. "But Dove has never been happier."
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But speaking of her like this is a strange thing. I think I must have told her, at some time or another, how remarkable she is. But perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I've only thought it.
Now, I say, "Where are we going?"
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"The library," I say. "I'm going to find a book on computers until I understand it will enough to get a job and afford better than beans."
I'm not eating beans anymore but I'm not eating well either. I've traded beans for eggs and, when I am feeling as if I deserve something nice, a large bag of oranges. I thought about buying a chicken but it was such a colorless, flabby thing under the plastic wrap that I had a hard time believing it would taste of anything anyway.
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No one cares that I have won the Scorpio Races four of the last seven years, that Puck Connolly was the first woman, the first rider on horse back, to win a Scorpio Race. No one cares that Corr must be fed in blood and meet. To everyone here, we are just two new people, and one exceptionally odd horse.
"There's sure to be something you could do posted there."
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"I don't like the idea of being old-fashioned and not knowing how things work." In the distance, there's a little boy and he can't be older than five but he's playing with his brother with one of those tablets and it's as easy for him as breathing. Put one of those things in my hands and it might as well be a magic mirror.
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"Old-fashioned," I say, because Thisby was a bit old fashioned maybe, in comparison to the mainland, and my father and I had loved it. And, of course, everything's old-fashioned to Darrow, with it's clean steel lines. I hate this place more than anything maybe. Maybe more than the Malvern Yards.
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And all the while, my hands are getting softer from lack of work. Any work.
"It'll be as cool and oppressively quiet in there as Saint Columba's anyway. So we'll feel at home."
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"I think I've only been in Saint Columba a few times," I confide. My confessional was the sea, had been since I was a child. I needed no priest for that.
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I don't know how to ask for more kisses.
"There, I think it's that building with the lion sculptures."
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We walk along in silence, a comfort to me and my inability to formulate my thoughts around Puck. When we reach the library, all I can do is shake my head a little bit.
"Do you think there are lions that come out of the woods or something?" I ask. Besides the library, there are statues with the beasts at City Hall as well. The sort of motifs that would have been horses on Thisby.
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"I think that's the sort of question that's asking for trouble in this city." Darrow, I've learned in a short time, provides no lack of the magical and terrible but with less of the predictability we had learned on Thisby. I hope, at least for now, that the statuary is really just statuary.
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I have a feeling, ascending the steps toward the library, that George Holly might be having a laugh if he could see the two of us.
"Oh, doubtlessly," I agree. "But at least it would be something, wouldn't it? I suppose Darrow's strange enough, having brought us here."
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Pushing past the door, I'm hit by the rush of cool air from the library. It's not the same as the cool damp of Thisby, but I'll take it over the heat.
"I'm not sure that's the kind of adventure that would suit us."
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"It's a good thing I don't listen to half of Skarmouth for their opinions." If I did, I would probably care a lot more, or a lot less, about some people I cared a lot less, or a lot more, about. But I rather like how much I care about the few people I care about.
The library has an oppressive silence, but I'll take that, and the cool, to be with Puck. It is rather nice, after all.
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As I find a table, I realize I'm still holding Sean's hand and it's reluctantly that I let go so we can sit. There's an airlessness here that feels like Saint Columba's in its quiet, even without long, lean statues of goggle-eyed men and horses to inspect my soul.
"I'm going to learn how to use this wretched thing," I say. "Or...Or I'll eat nothing but beans for a month." It's an awful threat, made more awful by the fact that if I remain jobless, it will come true.
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Assuming we don't make complete arses of ourselves.
"Maybe one of the librarians can help? They seem to know a lot about these sorts of things, anyway."
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Reaching into my bag, I withdraw the small, flat computer and prop it open. "I've gotten as far as turning it on and that's about all," I admit, pressing the button.
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"That's about as far as I've gotten as well," I admit softly, and shake my head. Her computer takes a moment to come to life, and we're both left momentarily staring at it. I end up snorting a laugh at how helpless we both are about this.
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"I'm going to find a book. At least I know how to use a library." Maybe the only library I've used is the school library in Skarmouth but how different can the sorting be?