Article: 5553 of alt.pub.dragons-inn Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: pilchuck!li From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus) Subject: [MG] Laughter in Low City Message-ID: <1993May11.164409.6616@data-io.com> Summary: very little despair... Sender: news@data-io.com (The News) Organization: Data I/O Corporation Date: Tue, 11 May 1993 16:44:09 GMT Status: O [ADMIN: Vic is the copyrighted creation of Stephen Hutchison and is used with his permission. Thanks, Hutch. Joy is mine, though magically touched by Bernie Hsiung. The others are low city NPC's created on the fly, though I rather like Bondie and Jessica. Grin. And go ahead and add Joy to the rolls. And, Dreamer, this is, in a way, for you and your anniversary, a bit early, to be sure, but what the heck... spring is finally here and I feel pretty good. ;) I hope you enjoy it.] ---- One spring day there was the sound of laughter in a low city street. She danced down the street, watching the light dance with her off the spinning pinwheel, all silver and red. Her breath was the wind that sent it dancing and her body the flying beauty. Further down the street there was shouting. "TOM!" A slender man balanced on joists tweleve feet in the air, turned with the grace of an cat, "What?!" "LOOK OUT!!" Without looking he dropped from the joists, caught his weight with his arms and hands on the joists and then dropped the rest of the way. Tom heard the section of roof hit the joists with a crash. He hit the floor with a jolt that went all the way up his legs. The pain only served to fuel the rage that burst from his fear. He sprinted out the door and ran into someone that he then shoved hard. The manager of the roof crew hit the ground hard and mad. He bounced up swinging. "Fight!" "Fight!" "Fight!" A crowd gathered to watch the entertainment. A girl danced down the street with a red and silver pinwheel, straight towards the fight. A rough clad man on the edge of the crowd blinked at the unfamiliar sight and then tried to catch her shoulder, "Miss, you don't want ta be goin' that way." She smiled a brilliant smile at him and danced away with a giggle. The rough man swore, which brought him the attention of others in the crowd. He pointed at the girl and was both gratified and surprised when others in the crowd moved to try and keep her safe, away from the fight. The slip of a girl whirled away from all of them, seemingly bound and determined to get hurt. Six people looked at her and then looked at each other in concert and six people stepped into the fight and pulled the two men apart. No one was hurt, and after things had calmed down, the rough clad man realized that he hadn't seen the girl after he'd stepped into help stop the fight. Much later, he and the other five who had broken up the fight found a bright gold piece with a tiny, colored paper pinwheel slipped into their clothing. None had felt the thief's touch that had placed them there. * * * Vic walked down the street, sore and tired and discouraged by his long day at work. There was still a long ways to go before he'd be able to fix and finish his own house, and at the rate that the money was accumilating, it felt like forever. The knowledge that all he was going home to was a dark, empty, half completed house didn't make his feet move any faster. "Hey, Vic!" Vic found himself striding a little longer, just trying to get away from Quinn's voice, but it didn't work. The hard tap on his shoulder came anyway. "Hey, Vic, why you don't go out with us anymore? Not good 'nuff for you?" The tone was half laughter as Quinn came up even to Vic. Vic then saw that Quinn had a hand around the wrist of his girl, Cadie. "Nah," said Vic, "I'm just trying to cut down." Quinn laughed. "Right. Cuttin' down. That woman's ruining your life, you know. You're givin' up all your fun for her, and she isn't even going to come back. She's got you by the balls, Vic, and you can't even see it." "Nah." said Vic, flatly, suddenly finding his heartbeat going up. He stared at the cobblestones under his feet, "You've got that wrong." "You got it wrong, Vic. You gotta train 'em, and if they don't listen..." he yanked lightly on Cadie's wrist, making her stumble to catch up, she giggled at the pull. "Hey, I still got my Cadie, you don't got anyone. Give up on that bitch and come for a drink... you can find someone else." Vic's eyes closed for a moment as his loneliness crashed down on him. He took a breath to accept when a laughing young girl ran headlong into him. She was beautiful, her hair wild and free, and her gray eyes soft and bright. She laughed, blushed, glanced up at him, said a laughing "Sorry..." At the look, Vic let her go and she danced around Quinn and Cadie. Set next to Cadie, Vic suddenly saw just how tired, frightened, and hunched Cadie was. The darkness under one of her cheekbones, he saw, was actually a bruise. He shivered, then looked back at the free girl that he had held for that single moment. She ran and danced down the street. The music of her laughter was like a bird song. Arienna was... no, is like that, Vic thought with wonder. I love her like that, he thought, a hollowness running through his heart. He looked Quinn in the eye and said pleasantly, "No. I'm not going with you. I don't want to." Quinn shook his head, muttering something, but Vic didn't hear. Vic smiled to himself as he walked to the shell of his house, seeing the dancing grace of a laughing girl... * * * Laughter, running feet, and squeals of children at play. Daria smiled at the sounds eventhough she was tired and her long empty stomach was only a hard knot within her. Bondie ran in the front door chased by his sister Jessica and a teenage girl that was all leggy grace. They stampeded through the house, shouting with laughter and then whirled around Daria. "Hey, Momma, can she stay for dinner?" "Yeah, Momma, can she, can she, Pleeeeeeeeeeze?" Daria felt her stomach go hollow. There wasn't enough food to go around to begin with and another mouth to feed... The teen-age girl looked at Daria with eyes that had seen too many things and Daria heard the careful cheerfulness that was in the next words, "It's all right, Bondie... I kin find somethin' fer myself, boyo..." Daria took a good look at the too-skinny girl and with a pang recognized some of the same marks that were showing on her own kids. She sighed and then smiled. "It's all right." she said softly and met those gray eyes with her own brown ones and didn't flinch at the question. "We can make it be enough." "All RIGHT!" yelled Bondie. Jessie giggled and clapped her small hands. The teen-age girl grinned down at Jessica and stroked the little girl's hair with a carelessly fond touch. The look that Jessie gave the teenager blurred Daria's vision. Joy would've been that age... Impatiently, Daria rubbed the tears from her eyes, the hunger was making her too sentimental, but she smiled as she thought it. "Bondie, would you please get the potatos from the bin?" asked Daria as she got out the pot for the boil. "How many, momma?" Daria frowned, knowing that there were only a dozen tubers left, and it would be another day before she could get her skeins into the Weavers' Guild. "How about three? Jessie and I will share one." Bondie's face showed his disappointment for just a second. The teenage girl laughed and said, "I'll race you to the rootcellar!" and the two of them took off with Jessie trailing behind at a panting trot. A moment later Bondie shouted in surprise, "MOM! There's *stuff* in here. When'd you *get* all this?" "What?" Daria frowned, as far as she knew there wasn't anything down there other than the potatos and an onion or two. She walked over, careful with hunger. She'd had a dizzy spell earlier in the day and it was better to be safe than broken on the rough stairs. The kids were standing in front of the bin as she walked in. When Daria entered the room, Jessica turned. Daria stopped and her jaw dropped. The little girl had both hands around an apple that was as red as rubies but far more precious. The apple was about as big around as two adult fists held together. Bondie turned with an armload of brightly colored vegetables. The teenage girl was kneeling by a bin next to the one that which normally held the vegetables and fruit, and white-gold whole grain flour ran from her hands. The teenager turned and met Daria's eyes, looking a little proud and a little questioning at the same time. In shock, Daria walked over to the bins and kneeled next to them, the dizzyness back. She leaned forward and touched the hardness of potatos, turnips, yams, and carrots, the crispness of celery and lettuce, and the softness of the flour in the other bin. Their reality steadied her. The bins were only a third full, but fuller than she'd had them in a long time. Enough for a week or two if she were careful, more than enough to last them through 'til she was paid by the Guild again. "How..." she felt her voice trail off as her thoughts came back. She looked more closely at the teenaged girl. "Bondie, why don't you take what you have back upstairs? Oh, and take Jessie with you. And, no, Jessie, you can't eat that apple until after dinner... it'll..." she took a breath and found herself grinning, "...spoil your appetite." They both stood as the two children left. The teenage girl brushed the flour off her hands, back into the bin, Daria noted with an approval that edged by hysterical laughter or tears. "What... who are you?" asked Daria. "I *know* these were empty earlier this afternoon." "My... my father..." Daria saw the sudden fear in the girl's face and Daria frowned so as not to wince. "He... well, he wanted to call me Deirdre..." She looked at Daria with something like longing. Daria thought a moment, it didn't occur to her until later that she, maybe, should have been surprised at the answer. All she saw was the question in that girl's face. She quietly said, "I'd have called you Joy, if you'd been one of mine." The girl's face lit up. "Thank you," said the little goddess who was once despair but who now chose the name Joy. She hugged Daria tightly enough to squeeze most of the breath out of Daria and clattered up the stairs. Daria laughed and suddenly felt her tiredness and the worn hunger of her body fall away. She bent with a litheness she hadn't had since the death of her husband and daughter and picked up a ripe squash and four cobs of sweet corn from the bin and had fun running up the stairs herself. There was the sound of laughter in a small house in the low city. -- Liralen Li | "Looking down on empty streets, all she can see are li@inigo.Data-IO.com | the dreams all made solid, are the dreams made real." aka Phyllis Rostykus | - "Mercy Street" by Peter Gabriel