Ch. 1 – No. 4: Tin and Iron
The ruined house has been restored.
Young eastern sunlight streamed through the forest, through the trees and brush framing the clearing of the stone house, warming the dark, fragrant soil that had been cleared around it. Fully intact, the house stood humbly with no hint that it had been a crumbling husk just a month prior.
Clove awoke slowly. Though she was accustomed to waking in unfamiliar places, a jolt ran through her body as she realized that she was awakening in her house for the first time. It was not the new environment that shocked her awake, but the circumstance; the knowledge that the day ahead, and all of those to follow, would be different from all previous days, when each sunrise had been marked by the perpetual transience of the lifelong nomad.
Stretching, yawning, Clove plod barefoot across the new floorboards. Arranging kindling in the stove and striking a match, she nursed a fire, sitting cross-legged before the hearth, watching the little flames dance and morph. A stack of the house’s old, decaying floorboards sat next to the stove. She fed them to the flames until a healthy blaze persisted.
“Vestiges of your past self…” she whispered to the house as the boards crackled and smoldered.
Each of Clove’s friends who’d worked on the house had left her with a housewarming gift. An iron kettle from Ashoomel; a little stoneware teapot from Spectra; an adjustable ladder from Qara; two iron pans and a pot from Wren; and finally, what was nearly an army’s ration of salt from Serropina, a gift of both practicality and jest poking fun at Clove’s proclivity for seasoning her own plate with vast quantities of the substance.
Clove had always dreamt of owning fine iron cookware, the heft of which was wholly impractical for travel. And while her new pot, pans, and kettle were a dream come true, she felt a sense of betrayal toward her old set of tin implements — piled in the corner among other disorganized possessions — as she ladled water from a pail into the iron kettle atop the stove.
Across from the stove build into the north wall, a large table stood flush against the south wall just below the sill of a wide window. A stool was tucked below it. These, along with the bed, were the only pieces of furniture in the house, all of which had been built using scrap wood from a junkyard north of Yonderwood.
Plucking a fig from the many in her brimming basket pack, Clove set it on a plate atop the table and lifted the new teapot’s lid. She sprinkled tea leaves into the vessel; fed the stove more splintered floorboards; listened for the thrum of the boiling kettle. Steam billowed from the spout, glowing in the midmorning sun as she tipped its contents into the teapot.
Taking a seat at the table, Clove sliced the fig, its juicy innards gleaming in the sunlight. The cup that had sat on the stove in the ruined house, the only homely item that had resisted decades of pillage and scavengery, now sat clean on the windowsill above the table. Clove reached for it, pouring the steeped tea inside. As she sipped tentatively, fragrant steam slithering from the liquid’s surface, she wondered about the last person to use the cup for its intended purpose. Who were they? What were they drinking? How did they spend their days? Who did they love, and who loved them? Why did they leave, and where did they go?
The stark silence of the house was underlined by distant birdcalls in the forest. Clove spent most nights awake until the wee hours, requiring little sleep, and while she was accustomed to the silence that fell after the world retired for the day, her life in the sunlight was often marked by the sounds of her traveling companions. Save for her few years of wandering alone, she had always awoken to the chatter of voices, the crunching of footsteps, the percussion of cookware. Now, it struck her how foreign it felt to wake up in silence; to hear the crackle of the fire so singularly, her own soft footfalls so distinct, the beats of her morning routine ringing clear and intentional.
But as she sat still and quiet, gazing out the window at the little grasses in the clearing, at the tall trees beyond, a soft thud arose beside her.
Reference Materials:
Leave a Reply